Fight against drug trafficking and radicalization: Gérald Darmanin announces the creation of a high-security prison in Guyana

In January, the Minister of Justice had already announced his intention to isolate the "hundred biggest drug traffickers" in this type of prison by the summer.

A penitentiary establishment in the heart of the Guiana jungle. Gérald Darmanin announced on Saturday, May 17, the opening by 2028 of a high-security prison with 500 places in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, with a 60-place section dedicated to prisoners sentenced to the longest sentences for drug trafficking . "I have decided to establish in Guiana the third high-security prison in France (...) An extremely strict prison regime, and one objective : to put the most dangerous drug trafficking profiles out of harm's way," the Minister of Justice told the JDD during a visit to the department. "A wing for around fifteen radicalized prisoners - Islamists and those on the S list - is also planned, according to the JDD.

" My strategy is simple : to strike organized crime at all levels. Here, at the beginning of the drug trade. In mainland France, by neutralizing the heads of the network. And all the way to the consumers. This prison will be a key in the war against drug trafficking," added the Minister of Justice, who has made the fight against drug trafficking his priority . He hopes that this prison "will serve to permanently remove the heads of the drug trafficking network" to the extent that "they will no longer be able to have any contact with their criminal networks."

Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni is the strategic crossroads for "mules", notably from Brazil, who every day try to board for Orly airport with, in their luggage or in their stomachs, cocaine from neighboring Suriname, on the other side of the river. It is also the former port of entry to the penal colony where convicts from mainland France disembarked, from 1850 to 1938. In January, the minister had already announced his intention to isolate by the summer the "hundred biggest drug traffickers" in "a high security prison" , previously emptied of its inmates, in order to prevent them from continuing their criminal activity from their cells.