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Friday January 3, an inmate held several people hostage at Arles prison (Bouches-du-Rhône) for five hours.
After five hours of “long and complicated negotiation”, the hostage-taking at Arles prison (Bouches-du-Rhône) ended without causing any injuries on Friday with the release of the five hostages “safe and sound ” and the surrender of the detainee, considered “very dangerous”. Here’s what we know.
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REPLAY. Hostage-taking at Arles prison: the hostage-taker has surrendered, no people injured, announces the police headquarters
Five people taken hostage
The detainee, aged 37, with an “unstable” profile according to several sources, “took five staff hostage […] for five hours, under threat of a weapon that he had made for himself” with “metal picks”, declared on the spot during a press conference the prefect of police of Bouches-du-Rhône, Pierre -Edouard Colliex, describing the man as “very dangerous”.
Among these five people – three nurses, a prison guard and a psychiatrist – the doctor had been released an hour earlier.
It was while he was going around 10:45 a.m. to the Complex Addiction Care Unit (UCSA) of the prison, “as part of follow-up care”, that the man threatened the four members medical staff and the supervisor, “with a homemade punch-type weapon”, before “sequestering” them in an area of the care unit by “locking a barred door” and “blocking it with means of a medical bed”, then specified in a press release the public prosecutor of Tarascon, Laurent Gumbau.
The hostage taker from the Arles central house was immediately arrested. No injuries. Thank you to the prison administration teams and the RAID police officers for their intervention.@BrunoRetailleau
— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) https://twitter.com/GDarmanin/status/1875192943897960532?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
“At first, (the detainee) allowed the doctor, a young mother, to be released”, and then “we were able to free the other hostages, so things ended well but they could have been very dangerous in reason for the weaponry” and “the profile of the hostage taker”, detailed the police prefect.
The man finally went to the Raid without causing any injuries, after a “fairly long and fairly complicated negotiation” concluded “without the use of force”, he continued.
A Guyana national known for acts of violence
The suspect, a 37-year-old Guyana national, was serving a “long criminal sentence” and was known “for acts of violence, particularly in detention on several occasions”, explained the police prefect.
This prisoner seemed to have the “motive” to change establishment, but “there was no precise, written request, as prisoners can make to the prison administration”, underlined during the same conference of urges the Tarascon prosecutor.
Sentenced by an assize court on appeal to 18 years of criminal imprisonment in 2020, “for acts of rape at gunpoint, as well as various misdemeanor convictions”, according to the Tarascon prosecutor, he had arrived at the Arles prison in November 2023 and was available for release in July 2031.
A man suffering from psychiatric disorders?
While several sources have highlighted the psychiatric disorders of the detainee, these have not been formally confirmed by the magistrate, according to whom “at this stage, […] we do not have a psychiatric profile, no psychosis, no psychotic element.”
“Investigations during police custody must in particular determine the motive of the person concerned, confirm the absence of psychiatric pathology and determine the conditions of manufacture and detention of the homemade weapon used,” specified Laurent Gumbau in the press release.
