- Climate change made deadly Hurricane Helene more intense: study
- A US climate scientist sees hurricane Helene's devastation firsthand
- Padres edge Dodgers, Mets on the brink
- Can carbon credits help close coal plants?
- With EU funding, Tunisian farmer revives parched village
- Sega ninja game 'Shinobi' gets movie treatment
- Boeing suspends negotiations with striking workers
- 7-Eleven owner's shares spike on report of new buyout offer
- Your 'local everything': what 7-Eleven buyout battle means for Japan
- Three million UK children living below poverty line: study
- China's Jia brings film spanning love, change over decades to Busan
- Paying out disaster relief before climate catastrophe strikes
- Chinese shares drop on stimulus upset, Asia tracks Wall St higher
- SE Asian summit seeks progress on Myanmar civil war
- How climate funds helped Peru's women beekeepers stay afloat
- Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded as wars rage
- Pacific island nations swamped by global drug trade
- AI-aided research, new materials eyed for Nobel Chemistry Prize
- Mozambique elects new president in tense vote
- The US economy is solid: Why are voters gloomy?
- Balkan summit to rally support for struggling Ukraine
- New stadium gives Real Madrid a headache
- Alonso, Manaea shine as 'Miracle Mets' blitz Phillies
- Harris, Trump trade blows in US election media blitz
- Harry's Bar in Paris drinks to US straw-poll centenary
- Osama bin Laden's son Omar banned from returning to France
- Afghan man arrested for plotting US election day attack
- Brazil lifts ban on Musk's X, ending standoff over disinformation
- Harris holds slight edge nationally over Trump: poll
- Chelsea edge Real Madrid in Women's Champions League, Lyon win
- Japan PM to dissolve parliament for 'honeymoon' snap election
- 'Diego Lives': Immersive Maradona exhibit hits Barcelona
- Brazil Supreme Court lifts ban on Musk's X
- Scientists sound AI alarm after winning physics Nobel
- Six-year-old girl among missing after Brazil landslide
- Nobel-winning physicist 'unnerved' by AI technology he helped create
- Mexico president rules out new 'war on drugs'
- Israeli defense minister postpones trip to Washington: Pentagon
- Europe skipper Donald in talks with Garcia over Ryder return
- Kenya MPs vote to impeach deputy president in historic move
- Former US coach Berhalter named Chicago Fire head coach
- New York Jets fire head coach Saleh: team
- Australia crush New Zealand in Women's T20 World Cup
- US states accuse TikTok of harming young users
- 'Evacuate now, now, now': Florida braces for next hurricane
- US Supreme Court skeptical of challenge to 'ghost guns' regulation
- Sparks fly as Orban berates EU 'elites' in parliament trip
- US finalizes rule to remove lead pipes within a decade
- Solanke hungry for second England cap after seven-year wait
- Gilded canopy restored at Vatican basilica
Convict freed in French ambush has history of violent crime: prosecutor
Mohamed Amra, the convict freed by gunmen in a murderous motorway attack Tuesday, has a long history of convictions for violent crimes that started when he was only 15, according to judicial sources.
The 30-year old inmate from Rouen in northwestern France, reportedly known as "La Mouche" (The Fly), was still on the run Wednesday, a day after accomplices killed two prison officers at a toll station and fled the scene with him. Three other prison guards were injured in the attack, with one fighting for his life.
"He is very well-known to the judiciary," Paris chief prosecutor Laure Beccuau told reporters.
Amra has close links to organised crime, said another source close to the case who asked not to be identified, and is suspected of ordering killings linked to the drugs trade.
Another source who asked not to be named said Amra runs his own drug trafficking network.
However, none of his 13 prior convictions -- for crimes ranging from armed robbery to extortion -- were directly related to the narcotics business, said Beccuau, who is leading the investigation into the motorway attack.
He was jailed in January 2022 in Evreux prison in the northwestern Normandy region to serve several sentences, including for criminal conspiracy, extortion, robbery, armed violence and participation in an illegal motor rodeo.
The latest conviction, for robbery, was pronounced only last week.
At the time of his escape he was also facing two fresh charges, one for attempted murder and another for participation in a gangland killing in the southern city of Marseille on the French riviera, a hub for drug trafficking and gang violence.
- Placed in solitary -
His lawyer, Hugues Vigier, told the BFMTV broadcaster that he was "dumbfounded" by Tuesday's events, adding he found it "hard to imagine" that his client could be implicated in "such indiscriminate, dramatic, insane, inexcusable violence".
The motorway attack did not match his impression of his client, said the lawyer, who has experience in organised crime cases.
"If he is implicated, then I will have been wrong about how he functions and what he is capable of," he added.
There was, the lawyer suggested, "another possible explanation" for the attack, a scenario in which Amra was kidnapped by the gunmen who came "not to free him but to hold him and make him pay for what they think he did".
The 20 Minutes newspaper quoted an unnamed police source as saying that while Amra's position in the Marseille underworld would have allowed him to give orders "we did not think him capable of such a high-level operation".
Amra had been ordered to attend a disciplinary hearing on Wednesday after guards discovered that the bars in his prison cell had been partly cut, prosecutor Beccuau said.
French media reported that he had been placed in solitary confinement after the presumed breakout attempt, which was too recent to have triggered additional security measures.
The officers guarding Amra were armed with pistols while the assailants attacked with military-grade assault weapons.
F.Schneider--AMWN