The perpetrator of the hostage-taking at Arles prison that occurred this Friday, January 3, was serving a long criminal sentence and was well known to prison officers for numerous acts of violence in detention. His psychiatric profile is disturbing.
The negotiations were “quite long and quite complicated”, but the man ultimately did not cause any casualties following the taking of five hostages at Arles prison (Bouches-du-Rhône) this Friday, and the worst was avoided.
A real satisfaction, because the profile of the suspect sends shivers down your spine. This 37-year-old Guyana national was serving a “long” criminal sentence and was also known for “acts of violence, particularly in detention on several occasions,” detailed the Tarascon public prosecutor, Laurent Gumbau.
The suspect had been serving an 18-year prison sentence since 2020 for “rape at gunpoint, as well as various criminal convictions”. Incarcerated in Arles since November 2023, he could have been released in 2031.
A disturbing psychiatric profile
The magistrate has not yet confirmed, nor completely refuted, the hypotheses put forward according to which the suspect suffers from psychiatric disorders: “At this stage, we do not have a psychiatric profile, no psychosis, nor any element psychotic,” he informed.
“Investigations during police custody” should make it possible to find out more about “the motive of the person concerned”, and “confirm the absence of psychiatric pathology”. According to the first elements, his “motive” seemed to be to change establishment, but “there was no precise, written request, as prisoners can make to the prison administration”, underlined the prosecutor .
Arles 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, sentenced to life imprisonment for the assassination of prefect Erignac in 1998 in Ajaccio, and where he was fatally attacked by a radicalized fellow prisoner in 2022. .
