France will imprison 200 of its most dangerous drug traffickers in two high-security prisons, the Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin has announced.
In an interview with broadcaster France 2 on Thursday evening, Darmanin said he had “decided to strike hard”.
The minister, who has made tackling the drugs trade a top priority since assuming the role in December, said the facilities would be renovated to make them “completely hermetic”.
Some of the drug traffickers will be housed at a prison in Vendin-le-Vieilby in the northern French Pas-de-Calais department by late July, he promised.
The remaining prisoners will be sent to a facility in Condé-sur-Sarthe in the western Orne department by mid-October, Darmanin added.
“That makes 200 drug traffickers, who by October 15, will be completely isolated from the rest of society,” he said.
The plans are an attempt to prevent drug traffickers from continuing their criminal activities from jail.
While Darmanin’s scheme involves transferring inmates to free up space at the two prisons, he confirmed that certain prisoners would not be moved.
“We will leave the most dangerous people in place,” he noted. “ All the people we will describe as dangerous to the outside world. Dangerous people, mainly drug traffickers, but also Islamist terrorists.”
France’s justice minister has turned to his European peers for advice on how best to tackle drug trafficking.
Last month, he toured prisons in Italy and met the country’s Justice Minister Carlo Nordio and the National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor Giovanni Melillo.
Last year, 110 people died and 341 were injured as a result of drug trafficking, according to the French Ministry of the Interior.
