The carcass of a burned car in front of the Tarascon prison in the south of France, on April 16, 2025. (Sylain Thomas/AFP.)
The involvement of drug traffickers has been confirmed in the investigation into attacks on prisons and penitentiary staff in France. Twenty-one suspects were presented on Friday to investigating judges tasked with organized crime in Paris.
Pretrial detention has been requested for these individuals, including two minors and seven already incarcerated, according to a joint statement from the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) and the National Jurisdiction for Combating Organized Crime (JUNALCO), now solely responsible for the investigations. "Among the accused" is "the individual believed to be the creator of the first Telegram account titled DDPF (Defense of French Prisoners) and author of the claim text broadcast on this channel, criticizing prison conditions," they highlight. Already detained, convicted for common law offenses, he is to be tried soon for acts related to drug-related crime close to the DZ Mafia in Marseille, France's second-largest city.
The "DDPF" group, then completely unknown, had posted videos and threats on this encrypted messaging platform, which subsequently deleted them and closed the channel.
The investigations "highlighted a similar operational method, deployed repeatedly: following an action order given by the instigator of the +DDPF+ movement on a Telegram channel, offers for actions were broadcast and relayed on social media, executors were recruited and carried out the acts, in exchange for significant remuneration," the statement relates. "This operational method corresponds to that now typically employed by criminal organizations to carry out missions on their behalf," the text adds.
In total, 30 people, including four minors, were apprehended between Monday and Wednesday during a large-scale operation throughout France. Seven police custody cases were lifted without prosecution at this stage. An adult and a minor are referred Friday before an investigating judge in Lyon, as the acts they are suspected of committing could not be linked to the main investigation.
300 investigators
The judicial investigation, opened Friday by JUNALCO for, among other things, criminal conspiracy with a view to preparing crimes and misdemeanors and attempted murder in organized gangs, focuses on about fifteen actions carried out against prisons and penitentiary staff since April 13. That day, in Agen (southwest), the "DDPF" tag appeared for the first time near seven cars set on fire in the parking lot of the National School of Penitentiary Administration (Enap). This was followed by a series of car fires of penitentiary staff members throughout France, firework mortar shots on prisons, and even Kalashnikov shots as in Toulon (southeast). The investigation also focuses on firearm shots and the throwing of two Molotov cocktails targeting on April 21 a housing area in Villefontaine near Lyon (central-east) where penitentiary staff reside, not far from the Saint-Quentin-Fallavier prison.
As early as April 15, the PNAT took charge of the investigation due to "the nature of these acts, the chosen targets, and the coordinated nature of actions committed on multiple points across the territory, as well as their aim to seriously disrupt public order through intimidation, as claimed on social media by a group called +DDPF+." However, following the operation, "it does not appear that these coordinated actions stem from a terrorist enterprise whose sole purpose would have been to seriously disturb public order through intimidation or terror," the PNAT and JUNALCO elaborate. "No violent radical ideology, no foreign interference, avenues fully explored, could be characterized," they continue. "However, the investigations have definitively placed these actions within extremely organized crime," according to the statement.
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin had attributed the attacks to organized crime from the outset, while the Parliament definitively adopted on Tuesday a bill aimed at strengthening the fight against drug traffickers. "More than 300 investigators throughout the national territory" were mobilized during the investigations.