"They will be found and punished": Dismay in France over a wave of coordinated attacks on prisons
The Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation to determine who is behind the attacks on prisons, for which the mysterious DDPF group has claimed responsibility.
BarcelonaFires, graffiti, and even shootings. Since Sunday, French prisons have suffered a series of coordinated attacks, particularly serious on the night of Monday into Tuesday, which have baffled authorities. At this point, it is unknown who may be behind the events and what their motivation might be. An uprising in support of prisoners? An action by drug trafficking gangs? For now, the Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) has opened an investigation to uncover the framework of the events, which occurred mainly in Île-de-France and the southern half of the country.
"They will be found, tried, and punished," French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday, lamenting that there are "people who seek to intimidate prison staff and attack prisons with unacceptable violence." Hours earlier, Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin had visited the Toulon prison in the southeast of the country, where hooded men opened fire with semi-automatic weapons at the entrance to the facility early Tuesday morning. "It's clear that there are people trying to destabilize the state through intimidation," he declared.
The attacks began on the night of April 13, when seven vehicles were set on fire at the National School of Penitentiary Administration in Agen. In the early hours of April 14, several prison officers' cars were set on fire at penitentiary centers in Melun, Valença, and Nîmes. But it wasn't until the following day that police began to believe it was a coordinated attack, when simultaneous incidents occurred at six prisons and shots were fired at the Toulon prison center. A new incident has occurred this morning: three prison staff vehicles were set on fire early in the morning outside the Tarascó prison in the southeast.
In almost all of the incidents, the attackers left behind a signature on the cars or on the burned walls: "DDPF." The acronym stands for "Defense of the Rights of French Prisoners," the name of a mysterious Telegram group. In a video posted on their channel, a group of hooded individuals appears using cans of black spray paint to create these graffiti. But no one knows who is behind it. "These are groups we don't know," a prison source told the newspaper. Le Monde.
French authorities admit that, for now, they know nothing. The initial hypothesis was that it could be a militant group. In fact, the Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office justified its handling of the case on Tuesday by citing the "chosen targets," the "concerted nature" of the attacks, and "the aim of seriously disturbing public order," as the DDPF group had claimed via Telegram. However, experts point to the newspaper Le Monde that there are "common elements of prison life" that suggest "the sphere of drug trafficking." And the Minister of Justice himself linked the violence to drug trafficking in a post on X: "Prisons have suffered attempts at intimidation ranging from the burning of vehicles to automatic gunfire. [...] The Republic is confronting drug trafficking and is taking measures that will profoundly disrupt criminal networks."
In another post, the group Defence of the Rights of French Prisoners said: "We are not terrorists, we are here to defend human rights within prisons."
Law to free France from the danger of drug trafficking
The attacks are coming as the French Parliament is preparing to vote on a new anti-drug trafficking law, which the Senate passed almost unanimously in February. The text, dubbed the "law to free France from the drug trafficking trap," envisions the creation of a specialized prosecutor's office for organized crime, measures against money laundering, facilitating the exchange of information between the judiciary and intelligence services, increasing the power of police investigating drug traffickers, and carrying out... Specifically, it could affect the solitary confinement regimes of prisoners convicted of drug trafficking and would authorize the Minister of Justice to impose solitary confinement orders of up to four years (currently, these orders must be renewed every three months).
The French government has been working for some time now reduce violence resulting from drug trafficking in the country, where seizures have reached record highs. A total of 110 people died and 341 were injured in France in 2024 due to drug-related violence, according to data released by the Ministry of the Interior in February. While the figure represents a drop compared to the previous year (as it coincides with the end of clashes between two large rival criminal groups in Marseille), the high proportion of young people involved is notable. A quarter of the murders and attempted murders were carried out by people under the age of twenty. The epicenter of this violence is southeastern France, primarily Marseille. But recently, drug gangs have expanded into smaller regional cities unfamiliar with drug violence.
