A “radicalized” inmate at a prison in northwest France, who seriously wounded two guards in a knife attack on Tuesday, was shot and injured in a police raid that also left his visiting partner fatally wounded, sources told reporters.
Michael Chiolo and his female partner had been holed up in the family visiting area of the high-security prison at Conde-sur-Sarthe in Normandy when police moved in and detained them, French Minister of the Interior Christophe Castaner said on Twitter.
Both were shot and wounded in the operation and “the woman died” of her injuries, a source close to the case said, adding that Chiolo was less seriously wounded in the cheek.
Elite police units moved in about 10 hours after 27-year-old Chiolo wounded the prison guards with a knife, which French Minister of Justice Nicole Belloubet suggested might have been smuggled into the prison by his partner.
“There is no doubt as to the terrorist nature of this attack,” Belloubet told reporters earlier.
Chiolo, who was serving a 30-year sentence, is thought to have become “radicalized” while in prison.
He shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”) during his rampage in the family visiting area, prison staff representative Alassanne Sall told reporters.
France has suffered a series of deadly attacks from extremists since 2015 and is on high alert amid concerns about the return of Islamic State militants from Syria.
The Paris state prosecutor separately said that accounts by witnesses suggested Chiolo “wanted to avenge” Cheriff Chekatt, who was shot dead by police after killing five people and wounding 11 at a Christmas market in Strasbourg in December last year.
The latest violence came as prison staff nationwide, who have been demanding better working conditions, have repeatedly staged protests on Tuesdays.
In January last year, prison staff held three weeks of protests after a guard was attacked by an extremist inmate at a high-security jail in northern France.
Experts and trade unions have consistently raised the alarm about the spread of extremism in French prisons, leading the government to build special facilities to house dangerous individuals who are sometimes held in solitary confinement.
“It was truly a murder attempt. There was blood everywhere. The family visiting unit was a battle scene,” said Sall, from the Force Ouvriere trade union.
One of the guards suffered a serious chest wound, while the second was slashed on the face and back, he added.
Chiolo was serving a 30-year sentence for kidnapping leading to a death, armed robbery and condoning terrorism.
He and an accomplice were in 2015 sentenced on appeal for choking to death an 89-year-old man they had tied up while robbing his home.
He was also sentenced to a year in jail — when already in prison — for asking fellow inmates to “re-enact” an attack by Islamic State gunmen on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in November 2015.
The extremists, wearing explosive belts and armed with assault rifles, killed 90 people in the concert hall, one of several venues attacked on the same day in and around Paris.
“After Paris, I would have carried on in other parts of the country,” he reportedly told another inmate, according to prison staff.
The Conde-sur-Sarthe prison is one of France’s most secure jails and does not suffer from overcrowding, unlike other facilities, Belloubet said.
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