Last week, the chief prosecutor of the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office expressed gratitude to the judicial authorities in Bucharest for their cooperation in the case of a criminal who had escaped from a French prison and was apprehended in Romania. MEDIAFAX presents exclusive details about his capture and how he attempted to negotiate his freedom while in police custody.
Attorney General Alex Florența met last Wednesday in Bucharest with his counterpart from Paris, Laure Beccuau. During their discussions, she highlighted the case of Mohamed Amra, who is regarded as the most wanted fugitive in France.
Amra, nicknamed “La Mouche” (“The Fly”), was imprisoned in France for drug and arms trafficking. However, with the support of the Albanian mafia, he escaped on May 14, 2024, from a van transporting prisoners, during which his accomplices shot and killed two guards and wounded three others. He then fled to Romania and rented a house in Voluntari under the name of an Albanian associate.
After being identified and arrested, judicial sources revealed exclusively to MEDIAFAX how “Musca” attempted to regain his freedom by offering €1,000,000 in cash. Following his escape from France, Amra went into hiding in Bucharest, where he altered his appearance to avoid recognition. However, he was caught near the Promenada mall in the capital on February 22, 2025, around 5 p.m. He had been under surveillance for 48 hours after French police received a tip-off about his whereabouts.
The police planned Amra’s capture meticulously and arrested him just as he was about to enter a plastic surgery clinic for an operation to change his appearance. Wanted for nine months across Europe for murder, arms trafficking, and drug trafficking, he did not resist when asked to identify himself. Despite revealing his identity, he made a shocking proposal to the Romanian police: one million euros in cash for his freedom, or two million euros paid in cryptocurrency.
After his arrest, Amra was taken to the IGPR headquarters, where he began negotiating his release. Speaking in French, he stated that he was willing to pay one million euros in cash or two million in Ethereum, but set two conditions: first, he wanted to speak to a superior, and second, he insisted that the payment only be made after all details regarding his release were settled. The police pretended to go along with his proposal and asked if he had the money available in the apartment he rented in Voluntari. Amra claimed there was only a small amount there but that he could call friends to gather the rest. He attempted to make calls, but no one answered.
All discussions were conducted in French using Google Translate, as Amra had the translation app installed on his phone. The agents used a hidden spy camera to record the entire conversation, both audio and video, until around 2:00 a.m. Once Amra realized that the police had set a trap to prove his attempted bribery, he asked to be connected with a lawyer.
After five or six hours of negotiation, he understood the agents were primarily interested in demonstrating his attempted bribery and eventually gave up his negotiation efforts. He then requested that they help him contact the best lawyer in Romania, one who had connections with judges and prosecutors.
This was actually a strategy employed by the police to charge him with attempted bribery, allowing them to legally detain him until a court could rule on his extradition. Following this, Amra was sent back to France, where, in addition to the charges he was facing there, a criminal case was opened against him by the DNA for bribery.
Currently, “La Mouche” is in the maximum-security prison in Condé-sur-Sarthe, which houses some of France’s most dangerous convicts, including Youssouf Fofana, the leader of the clan responsible for the murder of Ilan Halimi, Christophe Khider, a notorious criminal known for multiple escape attempts involving hostage-taking, Tony Meilhon, who murdered Laetitia Perrais in 2011, and Algerian terrorist Smaïn Aït Ali Belkacem, responsible for the 1995 bombings that killed eight people.
