France’s most wanted man busted from prison van

Mohamed Amra, 30, escaped from a French prison van after a ramming attack

Two days ago, French police caught Mohamed Amra trying to saw through the bars of his prison cell, The Telegraph reports.

The incident prompted his relocation to a disciplinary unit and his surveillance level was raised to level three, one below the “special surveillance” level reserved for France’s most dangerous prisoners.

It was to prove a fateful decision, and the 30-year-old convict is now the target of a massive manhunt after he was broken out of a police van in a brazen and brutal daylight raid.

Nicknamed “La Mouche” (The Fly), Amra has been described in the French press as a “high-flying bandit” involved in both international drug trafficking between the French Caribbean and mainland France. He is also “suspected of masterminding a drugs-related assassination attempt on a French citizen in Spain in the summer of 2023”.

Amra was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment by the Évreux magistrates’ court last Tuesday for aggravated robberies, including thefts from supermarkets and shops in the suburbs of Évreux between August and October 2019.

He had also been indicted by the specialised inter-regional court in Marseille for “kidnapping leading to death” and was then held at the Evreux prison on suspicion of ordering a murder in Marseille on June 17 2022, according to RTL. On that date, the charred body of a man was found in a burnt-out vehicle in Le Rove, near Marseille. The victim had clearly been shot in the head.

According to the Paris public prosecutor’s office, which has taken over the investigation, the trafficker had been charged with kidnapping and false imprisonment resulting in death by the Marseille JIRS (specialised inter-regional court).

The unsuccessful hit he allegedly ordered was filmed by terrified tourists in Marbella in July last year. According to Le Parisien, the Spain contract was part of a drugs turf war between Amra and a rival known as “Mehdi”. His rival then reportedly ordered a revenge hit in Evreux that same month in which two people died, one of them close to Amra.

He is also under investigation for “attempted homicide in an organised gang” in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray. At the time of the attack, he was being transferred back to Evreux from Rouen, where he had been interviewed by prosecutors over this case.