Who is attacking France's prisons?

France’s prisons have been attacked several times over the past week.

Since Sunday, there have been at least a dozen assaults on French jails.

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed that those behind the attacks will be tracked down and punished.

“Some are trying to intimidate our prison workers and are attacking (prisons) with unacceptable violence. They will be found, sentenced and punished,” Macron wrote on X.

He added the prison force was “carrying out its essential mission of defending the rule of law and keeping the peace with courage and dedication.”

“I restate my full support and that of the nation to all agents of the ministry of justice,” Macron wrote.

But what happened? And who is behind the attacks? What do we know?

Let’s take a closer look:

What happened?

As per BBC, there have been a dozen attacks since Sunday.

Cars outside prisons and an prison officer training centre have been attacked.

In two locations, guns were used.

Gunmen wielding automatic weapons also fired at the entrance to Toulon prison in the south of France, as per The Guardian.

A car was set on fire in front of the home of a prison guard who works in Aix-Luynes in southern France.

The door of a building in the Seine-et-Marne region was damaged.

Three cars were set ablaze at Tarascon prison also in southern France.

That adds to at least nine prison facilities and other affiliated institutions including a school for prison staff were targeted.

This came after at least six prisons guarding some of the nation’s most hardened crime kingpins came under gun and arson attack.

The attacks also targeted the National School of Prison Administration.

The letters “DDPF,” apparently an acronym for Droits des Prisonniers Français (Rights for French Prison Inmates) were graffitied on many of the attack sites.

Le Parisien reported that a prisoner on conditional release had been arrested in the Essonne, south of Paris, in connection with the DDPF.

A Telegram group called DDPF was created the day before the start of the attacks.

The group, which has over 1,000 members, was created on April 12, the day before the first wave of attacks when vehicles were set alight in the car park of the National School of Prison Administration in Agen, and in the Sud Francilien jail south of Paris.

On Tuesday, the group put up a video on Telegram showing a prison officer’s car burning.

As per BBC, the text accompanying the video claimed Justice Minister Gérard Darmanin had declared “war” on prisoners.

“All we want is that human rights be respected,” the text read. “If in 2025 we can watch TV, smoke and eat our meals without being bothered in our cells, it’s only because our elders fought for these fundamental rights.”

The outlet noted that the text was riddled with errors.

“We are not terrorists, we are here to defend human rights inside prisons,” another message on the Telegram group read, as per The Guardian.

Telegram blocked several of the messages posted by the group, as it said they “contain calls to violence.”

Who is behind the attacks?

As per BBC, France’s government has said the inquiry is ongoing.

The police are examining far-left gangs or foreign powers like Russia and Algeria.

But a senior French security source told Reuters there is currently no evidence to suggest foreign interference.

France’s government says that drug gangs are likely involved.

BBC quoted Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said he was “certain that what we’re dealing with is the drugs-yobs.”

“It’s not they who have declared war on us. It’s we who declared war on them with our new law on drugs trafficking. They know we’re going to be hitting their wallets.”

Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin, who this week announced a plan to build 3,000 prison places in pre-fabricated jails, said he believes the attacks are a reaction to government efforts to clamp down on a fast-growing drug trade fuelled by a record-breaking surge of South American cocaine flooding Europe.

“There are clearly people who try to destabilise the state by intimidating it,” Darmanin told CNews TV and Europe 1 radio.

“We are taking very firm measures that are leading drug traffickers to react.”

“We won’t back down,” he added. “If the state backs down, then there is nothing left, the French wouldn’t be protected anymore.”

As per The Guardian, France has brought in the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office to look into the acts.

The government said it did so given “nature of the facts, the chosen targets and the coordination of the acts committed in several locations.”

Darmanin, widely seen as a possible 2027 presidential contender, has been a key architect of the government’s counter-narcotics drive.

He plans to open new high-security prisons to house France’s top 100 kingpins, use video conferences for court appearances and limit inmates’ family contact.

Police say prisoners run their drug businesses via smuggled cellphones that they also use to order hits on rivals. They can even order kebabs and sushi, delivered to their cells via drones, according to videos posted online and prison officials.

In its manifesto, the DDPF group said it rejected Darmanin’s prison crackdown. In the group’s original photo, it showed a Photoshopped image of him behind bars in a Lacoste track suit.

“This channel is a movement dedicated to denouncing the violations of our fundamental rights that Minister Gerald Darmanin intends to undermine,” it said. “All prisoners in France must mobilize and wake up. The situation is grave: we are entering a dangerous and worrying era for the future of the prison population.”

It said hard-won prisoner rights, such as watching TV or exercise time, were being eroded, while phonebooth costs, at 1 euro a minute, were prohibitively expensive.

“The guards who beat us, who rape certain inmates, who exert physical and psychological pressure: most suicides in prison are due to the aggressiveness of the prison administration and its code of ethics,” they wrote.

The group also shared snippets from French documentaries about life behind bars, and humorous videos filmed by inmates. But it also contains more menacing messages.

“Know that our movement is spreading throughout France. All prison guards who took advantage of their power and contributed to the deterioration of prison conditions will pay the full consequences,” it said.

“You, Darmanin, started the war; we just want human rights to be respected,” they wrote.

Asked about the Telegram group on Tuesday, Darmanin said he didn’t know, nor care who was behind the slogan.

With inputs from agencies