France is to build a €400 million US-style “super-max” prison for drug lords and Islamist terrorists in the heart of the Amazon jungle.

Gérald Darmanin, the hardline justice minister, said on Sunday that the facility would be located in Saint Laurent du Maroni in the overseas territory of French Guiana. It is the same region where the notorious Devil’s Island penal colony was situated and was the setting of the novel Papillon, which was later made into a Hollywood film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.

Devil’s Island, where convicts survived for only five years on average, closed in 1953.

Darmanin’s plan comes amid rising fears of the “Mexicanisation” of France. Drug gangs have been waging increasingly murderous turf wars with Kalashnikov assault rifles and kidnappers have targeted French cryptocurrency millionaires in a wave of Latin American-style abductions.

The escape last year of Mohamed Amra, a petty hoodlum turned suspected drug baron, heightened public awareness that inmates were running organised crime syndicates from their cells using banned mobile phones.

A series of attacks on French jails and prison officers’ homes last month led to revelations of widespread intimidation of guards.

Isolating drug kingpins in a super-maximum security prison, surrounded by dense rainforest, thousands of miles from mainland France, would prevent them from continuing to pose a danger to society, according to Darmanin.

“The prison regime will be extremely strict, with one aim: to put the most dangerous narcotraffickers in a place where they can do no harm,” the tough-talking minister told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper during a weekend visit to French Guiana.

The modern version of Devil’s Island will house 500 prisoners, with special ultra-high security wings for drug barons and Islamist extremists deemed to pose a risk to national security. Justice ministry officials added that 15 places would be reserved for convicted Islamist radicals.

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The fortress-like prison is due to open by 2028.

“The drug gang bosses will no longer be able to have any contact with their criminal networks,” Darmanin said. “My strategy is simple, hit organised crime at all levels.”

It comes after similar announcements in the US, where President Trump has talked about reopening the notorious Alcatraz prison and sent gang members to high max jails in El Salvador.

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Up to a fifth of the cocaine reaching France is believed to transit through French Guiana. Dugout canoes bring cocaine destined for Europe, illegally mined gold and migrants across the Maroni river from Suriname.

Drug mules are paid a few hundred euros to swallow balloons or condoms filled with cocaine before boarding flights to Paris. Police estimate that one in three passengers departing from French Guiana’s main airport are carrying cocaine. Some are intercepted, many pass undetected.

Since Darmanin took over the justice portfolio in December, he has claimed to have “declared war” on drug traffickers.

Dozens have been isolated from other prisoners in maximum security units, prompting drug gangs to strike against prisons last month. Gates and guardhouses were riddled by bullets in a series of lightning attacks at night in what was described as an unprecedented challenge to law and order in modern France.

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Prison officers said they had long been accustomed to intimidation attempts by inmates but having their homes and cars targeted by accomplices on the outside marked a step change. Some officers said they were considering quitting their jobs.

The super-max prison in the Amazon is Darmanin’s latest attempt to curb the ability of jailed gang bosses to intimidate their jailers and dictate the terms of their incarceration.

France’s fragile government has pledged to clamp down on both crime and immigration, touchstone issues for Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally in the run-up to the presidential election in 2027.

Darmanin, who has called for the deportation of foreign convicts, visited Brazil last week to negotiate a bilateral treaty allowing France to send back jailed Brazilian drug mules.

“Brazil and France face the same networks, the same [smuggling] routes, the same cartels,” he said. “This is a war we must wage together.”

He is to visit Colombia and Peru in the next few weeks to discuss concerted action against drug trafficking.