Some 350 investigators are tracking down the slightest clue to find the commando who attacked the prison convoy in Eure on Tuesday May 14 to free Mohamed Amra. The motivations of his accomplices raise questions.
The images terrified France on Tuesday May 14. Assailants armed with heavy weapons opened fire without warning on prison officers in the attack on two prison vans transporting inmate Mohamed Amra to a toll booth in Incarville in Eure. In a few minutes, the commando killed two agents, Fabrice Moello and Arnaud Garcia, and seriously injured three others, before fleeing with the prisoner. Mohamed Amra and his accomplices are on the run. The hunt for the fugitives has only just begun. A carefully prepared operation, but we still do not know the motivations of the commando. Gérald Darmanin indicated that 350 investigators are mobilized to search for the perpetrators of this attack. The next day, Interpol issued a red notice at the request of French authorities.
If the slightest clue allowing the commando to be found is sought by investigators, the reasons for this escape remain, for the moment, unexplained. A lawyer, who interviewed Mohamed Amra a few days before the attack on his van, wonders. “He did not seem to me to be someone who still benefited from liquidity that could be mobilized to be able to organize this, and so I wonder if in reality he would not be an essential element in organized crime, which would have needed to pick him up to question him on a subject if the objective was to prevent him from speaking, he would have killed him on the spot”, explains Maître Grégory Kagan, lawyer at the Paris bar to France 3.
The investigators have various elements for their investigations: the marking of telephones, the interview of relatives and former co-detainees of Mohamed Amra, or even DNA analyzes at the scene of the attack. “The accomplices deployed a lot of resources. Which means either that he is someone worthy of interest, or that he should not be in prison to master a certain number of things. Even if he does not is not defined as a big boss, he is still a guy who must have notable importance,” specifies a source at 20 minutes.
For journalist Brendan Kemmet, three motivations could explain the commando’s action. The first is linked to friendship with “former comrades ready to risk their lives or years in prison to do that”, indicates the specialist in banditry and criminal affairs to 20 minutes. The second motivation “is that of remuneration”. “These could be people paid to do that. We know that drug trafficking generates a lot of money. However, we find killers in the streets of big cities in France who can be employed for not very expensive, as we know. seen in particular in the Pastor affair,” he continues. Last option put forward by the specialist, a “return of service”. “We can imagine that it is a return of service. It is an avenue that should not be forgotten. We do not know what services Mohamed Amra was able to provide in his career”, underlines Brendan Kemmet.