Mohamed Amra escaped from custody last May when armed assailants ambushed a prison convoy in Normandy, killing two guards. A notorious French fugitive who staged a deadly escape that killed two guards last year has been extradited from Romania to France, days after his arrest in Bucharest ended a nine-month international manhunt.
Mohamed Amra, nicknamed “The Fly”, was arrested near a shopping centre in Bucharest on Saturday after being identified by Romanian police, despite having dyed his hair red, possibly to evade detection. The Bucharest court of appeal approved his extradition request on Sunday.
An official at Romania’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the legal case was still ongoing, confirmed to The Associated Press that Amra was handed over to French authorities for extradition on Tuesday at an airport near Bucharest, where he arrived in handcuffs, flanked by armed police officers.
Upon arrival in France, he was taken to the main Paris courthouse, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. He will be ordered to carry out the sentence he escaped last year, for burglary, and also face charges in other cases, including murder, attempted murder and escaping from custody.
The high-profile search for Amra began last May when armed assailants ambushed a prison convoy in Normandy, killing two guards and seriously wounding three others in the process of aiding his escape. Amra fled after being sentenced for burglary in the Normandy town of Évreux. He was also under investigation for an attempted organised homicide and a kidnapping that resulted in death, French prosecutors said.
The international police organisation Interpol issued a notice for his arrest, while French investigators alerted counterparts in other countries after they suspected Amra had left France. After Amra’s arrest on Saturday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, hailed his capture as a “formidable success” and praised European colleagues who had ended the long cross-border hunt.
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau has said that Amra had connections with Marseille’s organised crime syndicates and was suspected of heading a drug trafficking network. As of Monday night, 25 people had been detained in multiple countries suspected of some role in his escape or in the aftermath, the Paris prosecutor said.
