France to open a new high security prison in French Guiana

France will build a new prison with high security on its overseas territory of the French Guiana to shelter drug traffickers and radical Islamists, the Minister of Justice in the country said during a visit to the territory.

Gérald Darmanin told the Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) that the prison will target organized crime “at all levels” of the drug supply chain.

The € 400 million facility (€ 337 million), which can be opened in 2028, will be built in an isolated place deep in the Amazon jungle in the Northwestern Saint-Lounge-Down-Maryni region.

The plan was announced after a series of incidents of violence related to criminal gangs which In recent months, the prisons seen and employees aimed at FranceS

The prison will last up to 500 people, with a separate wing intended to shelter the most dangerous criminals.

In an interview with the JDD, the minister said the new prison would be managed by an “extremely strict carperal regime” designed to “do not compare the most dangerous drug traffickers”.

Darman said the facility would be used to hold people “at the beginning of the drug path”, as well as serve as a “lasting means of removing the heads of drug trafficking networks” in continental France.

The French Guiana is a region of France on the northeast coast of South America. Its residents have the right to vote in the French election and have access to the French Social Security System as well as to other subsidies.

Its distance from the French continent means that Lords of Drugs “will no longer be able to contact their criminal networks,” Darman told JDD.

French authorities have long been struggling to control the infiltration of mobile phones in the prison network. Tens of thousands are known to circulate through French prisonsS

Earlier this year, the French government announced a new legislation intended to abandon the activities of criminal gangs.

The measures will create a special branch of the prosecutor’s office to deal with organized crime. It will also introduce additional powers to investigators and special protective status for informants.

It will also see the creation of new prisons with high security – including the facility in French Guyana – to hold the most powerful drug barons, with the further rules governing visits and communication with the outside world.

France has seen a series of attacks on prisons in recent months, which Darmanin has identified as “terrorist” incidents that come in response to new government law.

The perpetrators of these attacks have Set vehicles outside prisons ignite as the prison in La Farlede of Toulon was struck by firing.

In some incidents, the perpetrators of these attacks have formed themselves as defenders of prisoners’ rights.

The proposed new facility in the French Guiana must be built at a “strategic crossroads” for drug mules, especially from Brazil and Suriname, according to AFP News.

Saint-Laurent-Du-Maroni is the former port of the notorious Devil Island Criminal Colony, where 70,000 condemned from continental France were sent between 1852 and 1954.

The criminal colony was the situation of the book by French writer Henri Charrier Papilon, which was later made in a Hollywood film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.

The BBC contacted the French Ministry of Justice for comment.