France To Set Up Controversial Prison

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

PARIS (Worthy News) – France plans to move Islamic militants and drug traffickers to a maximum-security prison it is building near a former penal colony in French Guiana despite an outcry among local people and officials.

The wing would form part of a $450 million prison announced in 2017 that is expected to be completed by 2028 and hold 500 inmates.

The prison would be built in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, a town bordering Suriname that once received prisoners shipped by French leader Napoleon III in the 1800s.

Some of them were then sent to the nearby notorious Devil’s Island penal colony off the coast of French Guiana.

French Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin announced the plans to build the high-security wing during an official visit to French Guiana over the weekend.

He said on social media that 15 of the wing’s 60 spaces would be reserved for Islamic militants.

“We are seeing more and more drug trafficking networks,” he told reporters in French Guiana. “We must react.”

NEW PRISON

French media quoted officials as saying that people from French Guiana and French Caribbean territories would be prioritized for the new prison.

Darmanin has made the fight against drug trafficking one of his highest priorities. By this summer, he wants to isolate his country’s top 100 drug traffickers from their criminal networks.

He has similar plans for Islamic militants, following several deadly terror attacks in France.

Darmanin also said the new jail would help ease prison overcrowding in French Guiana, as well as respond to the growing threat of drug trafficking in the territory.

French Guiana is a significant transit point for South American cocaine on its way to markets in Europe, he said.

Clashes between rival organized criminal groups mean the territory has a homicide rate of 18.4 per 100,000 people, compared with 1.2 per 100,000 in mainland France, according to estimates.

Yet the announcement angered many across French Guiana, an overseas French department in South America.

INFAMOUS COLONY

It was once an infamous colony known for holding French political prisoners, including Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was accused of being a spy.

Dreyfus was incarcerated on Devil’s Island, a penal colony that operated for a century and was featured in the best-selling French novel “Papillon,” which later was made into two movies.

Jean-Paul Fereira, president of French Guiana’s territorial collective, an assembly of 51 lawmakers overseeing local government affairs, said the announcement took them aback.

He complained that the plan for the high-security prison had never been discussed with them beforehand.

“It is therefore with astonishment and indignation that the elected members of the Collectivity discovered, together with the entire population of Guiana, the information detailed in Le Journal Du Dimanche,” he wrote in a statement posted Sunday on social media.

Fereira said the move was disrespectful and insulting, noting that the agreement French Guiana signed in 2017 was for constructing a new prison meant to alleviate overpopulation at the central jail.

“While all local elected officials have long been calling for strong measures to curb the rise of organized crime in our territory, Guiana is not meant to welcome criminals and radicalized people from (mainland France),” he wrote.

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