French prison hostage standoff ends

A convicted rapist reportedly held five staff captive with an improvised weapon

A convict who held five staff hostage at a corrections facility in Arles, France, surrendered to the police on Friday, the authorities in Paris have said.

The Maison Centrale d’Arles is located in Bouches-du-Rhone in Provence and houses inmates sentenced to lengthy terms, mainly for violent crimes. The suspected hostage-taker has been imprisoned since 2015 for rape at gunpoint, and had previous convictions for violence and aggravated robbery, according to police.

“The hostage-taker at the Arles central prison has been arrested,” French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin announced on Friday afternoon, noting that no one was injured in the process.

Darmanin also revealed that the suspect had taken five people hostage: a doctor, three nurses, and a prison guard. The doctor had been released earlier in the day, as part of a negotiating process.

Local authorities identified the suspect as Philippe, a 37-year-old inmate born in Guyana. Several law enforcement sources told BFM TV that he had an “unstable psychiatric profile,” although the Tarascon public prosecutor said that there had been “no psychotic elements” involved in the hostage standoff.

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Philippe took hostages in the prison hospital on Thursday and reportedly demanded a transfer to another facility. He had “made a sort of bladed weapon with metal spikes,” the police prefect of Bouches-du-Rhone, Pierre-Edouard Colliex, told reporters on Friday.

The French government deployed the RAID special intervention force to Arles in case the talks with the suspect failed.

The Arles hostage situation happened the day after Darmanin visited the prisons in Marseille and spoke of wanting to increase the sentences of inmates who threatened “state agents” such as magistrates and prison guards.

The Maison Centrale is located in the Rhone valley, just north of Arles. It can hold 159 inmates and is currently at 85% occupancy, according to the French media.