France will build a new high-security prison in its overseas territory of French Guiana to house drug traffickers and radical Islamists, the country’s justice minister announced during a visit to the territory.
Gérald Darmanin told Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) newspaper that the prison would target organised crime “at all levels” of the drug supply chain.
The €400m (£337m) facility, which could open as early as 2028, will be built in an isolated location deep in the Amazon jungle in the northwestern region of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni.
The plan was announced after a series of violent incidents linked to criminal gangs, which saw prisons and staff targeted across France in recent months.
The prison will hold up to 500 people, with a separate wing designed to house the most dangerous criminals.
In an interview with JDD, the minister said the new prison would be governed by an “extremely strict carceral regime” designed to “incapacitate the most dangerous drug traffickers”.
Darmanin said the facility would be used to detain people “at the beginning of the drug trail”, as well as serving as a “lasting means of removing the heads of the drug trafficking networks” in mainland France.
French Guiana is a region of France on the north-east coast of South America. Its residents are eligible to vote in French elections and have access to the French social security system, as well as other subsidies.
Its distance from the French mainland means drug lords “will no longer be able to have any contact with their criminal networks”, Darmanin told JDD.
French authorities have long struggled to control the infiltration of mobile phones into the prison network. Tens of thousands are known to circulate through French jails.
Earlier this year, the French government announced new legislation designed to crack down on the activity of criminal gangs.
The measures will create a dedicated branch of the prosecutors’ office to deal with organised crime. It will also introduce extra powers for investigators, and a special protected status for informers.
It will also see the creation of new high-security prisons – including the facility in French Guiana – to hold the most powerful drugs barons, with stricter rules governing visits and communication with the outside world.
France has seen a series of attacks on prisons in recent months, which Darmanin has described as “terrorist” incidents that come in response to the government’s new legislation.
The perpetrators of these attacks have set vehicles outside prisons alight, while Toulon’s La Farlede prison was hit by gunfire.
In some incidents the perpetrators of these attacks have styled themselves as defenders of prisoners’ rights.
The proposed new facility in French Guiana is to be built at a “strategic crossroads” for drugs mules, particularly from Brazil and Suriname, according to AFP news agency.
Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni is the former port of entry to the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony, where 70,000 convicts from mainland France were sent between 1852 and 1954.
The penal colony was the setting of French writer Henri Charrière’s book Papillon, which was later made into a Hollywood film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.
The BBC has contacted the French justice ministry for comment.
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