five people taken hostage by an inmate at Arles prison

AA/Tunis

Since the end of Friday morning, the central house of Arles (south of France), located in the northern industrial zone of the city, a few kilometers from the center, has been the scene of a hostage taking, reported by local media.

Holed up in the establishment’s infirmary, an inmate detains five people under threat of a homemade bladed weapon. These would be four medical staff and a prison guard, specifies the regional daily La Provence.

Aged 37, this detainee, known very unfavorably to the police and the justice system for numerous common law offenses, had been sentenced to 18 years of imprisonment for sexual offenses and had, moreover, been reported to have been radicalized. in 2013. The current hostage-taking would not, however, be based on jihadist motives, but on the discontent of the thirty-year-old following the refusal of his transfer, underlines the same media.

Several police officers have positioned themselves around the prison, awaiting the intervention of the ERIS teams (regional intervention and security teams).

The Raid was also activated by the Bouches-du-Rhône police prefect, according to the same source.

With 159 places and 137 inmates serving long sentences there, the central Arlesian house, built in the early 1990s, is not a penitentiary establishment where we suffer from this prison overcrowding which sometimes hits the headlines. The occupancy rate there is in fact 85%, specifies La Provence.

Last October, however, the FO Justice union was concerned about “the situation at the central prison in Arles, in particular with regard to the safety of agents, the care of detainees, and the effectiveness of the systems in place “, and also raised the question of “the evolving profile of prisoners, with an increasing number of individuals suffering from serious psychiatric problems”, indicates the same media outlet.

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