France
will build a new high-security prison in its overseas territory of
French Guiana to house drug traffickers and radical Islamists, the
country's justice minister announced during a visit to the territory.
Gérald
Darmanin told Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) newspaper that the prison
would target organised crime "at all levels" of the drug supply chain.
The
€400m (£337m) facility, which could open as early as 2028, will be
built in an isolated location deep in the Amazon jungle in the
northwestern region of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni.
The prison will hold up to 500 people, with a separate wing designed to house the most dangerous criminals.
In an interview with JDD, the minister
said the new prison would be governed by an "extremely strict carceral
regime" designed to "incapacitate the most dangerous drug traffickers".
Darmanin
said the facility would be used to detain people "at the beginning of
the drug trail", as well as serving as a "lasting means of removing the
heads of the drug trafficking networks" in mainland France.
French
Guiana is a region of France on the north-east coast of South America.
Its residents are eligible to vote in French elections and have access
to the French social security system, as well as other subsidies.
Its
distance from the French mainland means drug lords "will no longer be
able to have any contact with their criminal networks", Darmanin told
JDD.
French authorities have long
struggled to control the infiltration of mobile phones into the prison
network. Tens of thousands are known to circulate through French jails.
Earlier this year, the French government announced new legislation designed to crack down on the activity of criminal gangs.
The
measures will create a dedicated branch of the prosecutors' office to
deal with organised crime. It will also introduce extra powers for
investigators, and a special protected status for informers.
It
will also see the creation of new high-security prisons - including the
facility in French Guiana - to hold the most powerful drugs barons,
with stricter rules governing visits and communication with the outside
world.
France has seen a series of attacks on
prisons in recent months, which Darmanin has described as "terrorist"
incidents that come in response to the government's new legislation.
In some incidents the perpetrators of these attacks have styled themselves as defenders of prisoners' rights.
The
proposed new facility in French Guiana is to be built at a "strategic
crossroads" for drugs mules, particularly from Brazil and Suriname,
according to AFP news agency.
Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni
is the former port of entry to the infamous Devil's Island penal
colony, where 70,000 convicts from mainland France were sent between
1852 and 1954.
The penal colony was
the setting of French writer Henri Charrière's book Papillon, which was
later made into a Hollywood film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin
Hoffman.
The BBC has contacted the French justice ministry for comment.
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