San Francisco Frontiers - France charges 21 prison attack suspects

Investigators believe the attacks were carried out by drug traffickers, with at least one suspect thought to have ties to a notorious cartel.

Attackers in April struck at several jails and other facilities across France, torching cars, spraying the entrance of one prison with automatic gunfire and leaving mysterious inscriptions.

A total of 30 people, including four minors, were arrested this week in police raids across France. Seven of them were released without charge.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told reporters Saturday that 19 of the suspects were being held in pre-trial custody, while the two adolescents had been placed in a detention facility for minors.

They are accused of instigating the operations, acting as go-betweens, recruiting accomplices or carrying out the attacks, she said.

The suspects, aged between 15 and 37 and including two women, had targeted prison staff "with extreme, uninhibited and premeditated violence" in both their professional and private lives, she said.

Some of the suspects were believed to belong to organised crime groups, while other were "completely unknown" to police, Beccuau said.

The assaults have embarrassed the right-leaning government whose tough-talking ministers of justice, Gerald Darmanin, and interior, Bruno Retailleau, have vowed to intensify the fight against narcotics and drug-related crime.

President Emmanuel Macron has promised the attackers would be "found, tried and punished."

French anti-terror prosecutors were initially put in charge of the case due to the coordinated nature of the attacks but the office for the fight against organised crime, known by its acronym JUNALCO, has since taken over.

More than 300 investigators have been involved in the case.

Several of the arrests took place inside prisons, with suspected leaders of the attacks believed to have directed them from inside.

Attackers left the inscription "DDPF" -- standing for "Rights of French Prisoners" -- at nearly all the crime scenes.

The modus operandi of the assaults bore the hallmarks of organised crime, with perpetrators recruited online and promised "significant remuneration" in exchange for carrying out attacks, according to investigators.

On Tuesday, lawmakers approved a major new bill to combat drug-related crime, with some of France's most dangerous drug traffickers facing being locked up in high-security units in prison in the coming months.

N.Wilson--SFF