Lucy Clarke-Billings
BBC News
A French convict who went on the run after escaping a police van in a deadly ambush has been arrested in Romania, French authorities have said.
Two prison officers were killed and three others injured when a vehicle carrying Mohamed Amra was attacked by men using military-grade assault weapons in May 2024.
Amra, known as La Mouche, or The Fly, has links to a major drug gang in Marseille, according to French police.
President Emmanuel Macron hailed his capture as “a formidable success” and said his thoughts were with the families of the prison officers who died.
Amra was arrested in Bucharest and had been identified through facial recognition tools and his fingerprints, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said. He had changed his appearance and dyed his hair.
On Sunday, Beccuau announced the arrest of 10 people “suspected of having helped in the preparation and execution of the escape, and having helped the fugitive to hide”.
Macron said he also wanted “to thank our European colleagues and French investigators who had been hunting Mohamed Amra for months and months”.
France’s Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau thanked Romania for its “crucial cooperation”.
Amra escaped from a prison van after the vehicle was ambushed by gunmen at a toll booth at around 11:00 (09:00 GMT) on 14 May near Rouen, Normandy.
Two prisoner officers were killed after the van was rammed and shots were fired. Three other officers were injured.
The gunmen escaped in a car which police later found abandoned close to where the attack happened.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Amra had been convicted of burglary by a court in Evreux on 10 May and was being held at a prison in Val-de-Reuil until his escape on 14 May.
He had also been indicted by prosecutors in Marseille for a kidnapping that led to a death, it said.
Amra was not a “closely watched inmate”, Beccuau said at the time, using a term for highly dangerous prisoners.
However, his transportation still reportedly required a “level three escort” which meant there were five prison officers travelling with him.
His lawyer at the time, Hugues Vigier, said Amra had attempted to escape prison the weekend before the ambush by sawing the bars of his cell, but said he was shocked by the “inexcusable” and “insane” violence.
“This does not correspond to the impression that I had of him,” the lawyer told BFMTV.
At the time, Macron said “everything” was being done to find the perpetrators of the attack, which marked the first deaths of French prison officers in the line of duty since 1992.
More than 300 investigators were assigned to track Amra down and roadblocks were set up across north-west France, according to police.
“After a manhunt lasting several months, Amra has been arrested, finally!” Prime Minister Francois Bayrou wrote on X on Saturday.
