The police chief, the public prosecutor and the mayor of Arles must make a press briefing on site.
Aged 37, the man is incarcerated for rape at gunpoint and has expressed his desire to be changed prison, said a source close to the case.
The man presents “a psychological profile, not a terrorist profile or anything else”, specified the prison administration, stressing that the regional intervention and security teams (Eris) are on site, as well as the local teams of prison security (ELSP).
The inmate was eligible for release in 2031. The Raid intervention forces were activated by the police prefect.
Yvan Colonna's ex-prison
We have mobilized all means” to put an end to the hostage-taking, indicated on occasion on which he notably met the staff of the Marseille Baumettes prison.
The Arles central prison, a prison created in 1991, is reserved for prisoners sentenced to sentences of more than 10 years of criminal imprisonment or presenting security risks. It was in this establishment that Corsican independence activist Yvan Colonna was detained, and it was there that he was fatally attacked by a fellow inmate in 2022. Yvan Colonna was serving a life sentence there for the assassination of prefect Claude Erignac in 1998 in Ajaccio. He had been violently attacked in the gym by Franck Elong Abé, a radicalized 36-year-old man convicted in particular in a terrorist case.
