Star Metro - New attacks target France prison guard cars, home

Since Sunday, unknown assailants have hit several jails and facilities across France, torching cars, spraying the entrance of one prison with automatic gunfire, and leaving mysterious inscriptions.

The national anti-terrorist prosecutor's office is leading a probe into the attacks, and Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin accused people linked to drug trafficking of being responsible.

"Clearly people are trying to destabilise the state by intimidating it," he told the CNews/Europe 1 broadcaster on Wednesday.

"They are doing it because we are taking measures against the permissiveness that has existed until now in jails," he said.

Darmanin and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau have in recent months vowed to intensify the fight against narcotics and drug-related crime.

Darmanin is leading what he calls a "prison revolution" that aims to lock up 200 of France's 700 most dangerous drug traffickers in two top-security prisons from this summer.

A bill against drug-related crime, which includes these prisons, is set to go to a vote in parliament at the end of the month.

- 'Scary' -

Early on Wednesday, assailants set fire to three cars -- including one belonging to a prison guard -- in the car park of a jail in the southern town of Tarascon, its prosecutor said.

The car of another guard working at a jail outside Aix-en-Provence, also in the south, was torched outside his home, a representative from a prison workers' union and the anti-terrorist prosecutor's office said.

In the Seine-et-Marne region near Paris, someone scrawled the letters "DDPF" -- standing for "Rights of French Prisoners" -- and tried to start a fire in the entrance of a building where a woman prison guard lives, a police source said.

Several prison guards, who did not give their names out of fear for their safety, said they were worried.

"It's the first time in my career that I look back as I leave work and check what is going on in the parking lot," a 47-year-old woman, who has worked as a prison guard for 22 years, told AFP.

She said she now locks the door as soon as she gets home.

Another guard, 34, said what was happening was "scary".

"Tracking down a guard, following them home requires preparation and premeditation," he said.

Before the current wave of attacks, in September three masked assailants broke into the home of a prison guard in Montreuil just outside Paris, beating him and his partner and issuing threats linked to his work, the local prosecutor's office said.

"Threats and intimidation inside prisons are part of the daily grind," the secretary-general of the UFAP UNSA Justice union Wilfried Fonck told AFP.

"But that this is now happening outside is worrying."

Dominique Gombert, deputy head of the FO Justice union, spoke of "a desire to spread terror".

Up until late on Tuesday, 21 vehicles had been graffitied or set on fire, a police source said.

Most of the incidents were recorded overnight Monday to Tuesday.

The inscription "DDPF" featured at nearly all sites, except for the prison near Toulon, where assailants left the mysterious acronym "DDFM".

- 'Fundamental rights' -

A group calling itself "DDPF" on Telegram on Wednesday published a video showing a prison guard leaving a car, then shaky footage of a letter box, zooming in on the name on it.

The video, viewed by AFP before Telegram deleted it, ends with the letters "DDPF" against the backdrop of a car burning in front of a building at night. The account, created on Saturday, has more than 1,000 followers.

In a post on Sunday, the group described itself as "a movement dedicated to denouncing violations of fundamental rights that minister Gerald Darmanin intends to breach".

Darmanin told CNews he was seeking to crack down on "drug networks that continue to operate from prison cells".

"They order killings, launder money. They threaten police officers, judges, prison guards, and they escape," he added.

Assailants last year attacked a prison van carrying suspected drugs baron Mohamed Amra at a highway tollbooth, freeing him and killing two prison guards.

The International Prisons Observatory watchdog has criticised Darmanin's plan, saying it was based on a "security obsession" and included measures violating "human rights".

S.Lapointe--SMC