French prisoner arrested nine months after the mortal ambush

A French convict who ran after escaping from a police truck in a mortal ambush was arrested in Romania, French authorities said.

Two prison officers died and three others were injured when a vehicle that transported Mohamed Amra was attacked by men with military grade assault weapons in May 2024.

Amra, known as La Mouche, or the fly, has links with an important drug gang in Marseille, according to the French police.

President Emmanuel Macron acclaimed his capture as “a formidable success” and said that his thoughts were with the families of the prison officers who died.

Macron said he also wanted to “thank our European colleagues and French researchers who had been hunting Mohamed Amra for months and months.”

France’s Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, thanked Romania for his “crucial cooperation.”

Amra escaped a prison truck after the vehicle was ambushed by armed men in a toll booth around 11:00 (09:00 GMT) on May 14, near Rouen, Normandy.

Two prison officers were killed after the truck was rammed and the shots were shot. Three other officers were injured.

The gunmen escaped in a car that later the police found abandoned near where the attack occurred.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said Amra had been sentenced by a court for an Evreux court on May 10 and was detained in a prison in Val-de-Reuil until his escape on May 14.

He had also been accused of Marseille prosecutors for a kidnapping that caused a death, he said.

Amra was not a “recline closely observed,” said prosecutor Laura Beccuau at that time, using a mandate for highly dangerous prisoners.

However, its transport still required a “level three escort”, which meant that there were five prison officers traveling with him.

His lawyer at that time, Hugues Vigier, said that Amra had tried to escape from prison on the weekend before the ambush by sawing the bars of her cell, but said she was shocked by “inexcusable” and “crazy” violence.

“This does not correspond to the impression I had of him,” the lawyer told BFMTV.

At that time, Macron said that “everything” was being done to find the perpetrators of the attack, which marked the first deaths of the French prison officers in the fulfillment of duty since 1992.

According to the Police, more than 300 investigators were assigned to track AMRA and obstacles were established throughout the northwest of France, according to the police.

“After a human hunt that lasted several months, Amra has been arrested, finally!” Prime Minister Francois Bayrou wrote on X on Saturday.