PARIS: A convicted drug trafficker and suspected gangland killer described as France’s “public enemy number one”, who was arrested in Romania over the weekend after months on the run, arrived in France on Tuesday.

French convict Mohamed Amra — on the run since his escape last May in an ambush that left two prison officers dead — was arrested near a shopping centre in Bucharest on Saturday.

Even though he changed his appearance and dyed his hair orange, Amra had been identified through facial recognition tools and fingerprints.

Romania had vowed to hand the high-profile convict over to the French authorities, despite him contesting his detention.

Handcuffed and flanked by Romanian special police forces, Amra was seen being escorted through the lobby of Bucharest airport on Tuesday.

The 30-year-old convict is accused of gangland murders and drug trafficking.

Since the weekend, authorities have detained more than 20 of his suspected accomplices, including in Morocco and Spain. Amra escaped nine months ago when gunmen with military-grade assault weapons attacked a prison van transporting him in northern France’s Normandy region. He then vanished.

The brutality of the ambush, which was caught on CCTV, shocked France, and Amra instantly became the country’s most-wanted man.

The authorities tasked more than 300 investigators with finding Amra, who is known as “La Mouche” (The Fly), and has a long history of convictions for violent crimes that started when he was in his early teens.

According to a judiciary report, he started out with aggravated robberies and progressively “slid towards violence”, eventually entering the world of organised crime.

The report found that authorities underestimated for some time just how dangerous he had become.

Amra is suspected of pursuing his drug-related activities from his prison cell, and even of ordering hits from detention.

At the time of his escape last May, Amra was facing one charge for attempted murder and another for participation in a gangland killing in the southern city of Marseille, a hub for drug trafficking and gang violence.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2025