France to build high-security jail in Amazon to isolate drug traffickers from gangs

The country's Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin announced the €400-million scheme during a visit to French Guiana on Sunday.

France plans to build a high-security prison in the Amazon as part of its crackdown on serious drug offenders. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin announced the proposal during a visit to French Guiana — an overseas territory in South America which borders Brazil and Suriname — at the weekend.The scheme would see a 500-bed prison built in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, an area of French Guiana, with space to house 60 high-level drug criminals and 15 terrorists, Darmanin said. A courthouse will also be built at the Ministry of Justice site, which could open as early as 2028 and which is due to cost €400 million, he explained. The facility will be constructed close to a notorious penal colony known as the Devil's Island that France operated until the 1950s. The penal colony, which was renowned for its short life expectancy, was used as the setting for the novel "Papillon", which later became a Hollywood film starring Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen. The minister told the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) that the purpose of the prison is "to put the most dangerous drug traffickers out of action."As well as targeting the drug trade in the territory, Darmanin also said that it would help to ease prison overcrowding. 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. Under this plan, prisoners will be transferred to two high-security prisons at Vendin-le-Vieil (Pas-de-Calais) and Condé-sur-Sarthe (Orne) in mainland France. Speaking to the French newspaper Le Monde in January, Darmanin explained his reasoning. "What is unbearable is that prisons are no longer obstacles for most narco-traffickers to continue their trafficking, or to assassinate or to threaten magistrates, prison officers, journalists or lawyers," he said.The third high-security prison in his anti-drugs plan will be the one in French Guiana.