French prisons targeted in 'terrorist attack' amid drug crackdown, minister says

By Gabriel Stargardter and Juliette Jabkhiro

PARIS (Reuters) -France's justice minister said on Tuesday gun and arson attacks on at least six prisons around the country were acts of terrorism directed at security officials charged with guarding some of the nation's most hardened crime kingpins.

Visiting Toulon prison in southern France, whose entrance was shot at with an AK-47 automatic rifle, Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said he could not be sure if the attacks were linked to government efforts to clamp down on France's fast-growing drug trade.

But he said authorities were making life much harder for imprisoned gangsters, and the government would not shy away from tackling drug crime, which has boosted support for the far right.

"The Republic will not back down," he told reporters. "These are extremely serious crimes ... an attack on the public prison service, that is, a terrorist attack."

Years of record South American cocaine imports to Europe have transformed local drug markets, sparking a wave of violence. 

Despite record cocaine seizures in France, gangs are reaping windfalls as they expand from traditional power bases in cities such as Marseille into smaller towns unused to drug violence.

Darmanin, who plans to create new high-security prisons to crack down on gangsters who run their empires from behind bars, said at least six prisons had been targeted.

Prison officers' union UFAP said vehicles were set on fire outside jails in Villepinte, Nanterre, Aix-Luynes, and Valence. In Nancy, a prison officer was threatened at home, while in Marseille, there was an attempted arson attack.

ANTI-TERRORISM PROSECUTORS

The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) said it had taken charge of the probe into the attacks, which also targeted the National School of Prison Administration. The PNAT said officers from France's domestic intelligence agency DGSI would assist in the investigation.

"The nature of these facts, the targets chosen and the concerted character of an action committed on multiple points on the territory, as well as the objective to seriously disturb public order with intimidation ... leads, at this stage, the national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office to take charge to ensure, in this unprecedented context, national coordination of the probes involved," PNAT said in a statement.

PNAT said its investigation may involve charges, including attempted murder with a terrorist outfit committed against a person in a position of public authority.

Darmanin said it was unusual for PNAT, rather than specialised organised crime prosecutors, to take charge of the investigation, but it was justified due to the national scale of attacks against symbols of the state.

The letters "DDPF" - apparently an acronym for "French prisoners' rights" - were tagged on many of the attack sites, and police sources suggested it could be the work of a far-left militant group.

Darmanin said there had been DDPF groups on Telegram and Signal that had encouraged attacks against prisons, but "there hasn't been any claim of responsibility."

"I don't know who's behind this slogan, and I don't care because what I remember is not that a prison door was tagged, but that it was shot at by a Kalashnikov," he said.

Darmanin said the prison attacks reminded him of contracts given to gangsters to threaten, assault or kill rivals.

"We generally see such things between thugs; we rarely see it against the forces of the Republic," he said.

Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said he had instructed law enforcement to step up protection of staff and prisons. 

SURGING DRUG CRIME

The rise in gang crime has increased support for the far-right National Rally party and helped drag French politics rightward.

Darmanin has proposed measures to tighten prison security, including building high-security jails to isolate the country's top 100 kingpins.

Lawmakers are also close to approving a sweeping new anti-drug trafficking law that would create a new national organised crime prosecutors' office and give greater investigative powers to police probing drug gangs.

Authorities scored a win in February, when they recaptured Mohamed Amra, a French fugitive known as "The Fly". His high-profile escape as he was being transported from prison to court resulted in the deaths of two prison guards.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Dominique Vidalon, Juliette Jabkhiro and Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta, William Maclean, Alison Williams, Giles Elgood and Rod Nickel)