A prisoner managed to make a mad-dash escape from a French prison, taking the opportunity of his cellmate’s release to hide inside his fellow-prisoner’s luggage
A 20-year-old prisoner made a daring escape from jail after seizing an opportunity during his cellmate’s release – and no-one even noticed he was gone until the following day.
The prisoner – who was reportedly serving multiple sentences in France – climbed inside his cellmate’s laundry bag, in what has been called an “extremely rare event” caused by a “accumulation of errors.”
Sébastien Cauwel, the director of France’s prison administration, told AFP that the lag, who has been identified by local media as Elyazid A, “took advantage” of the moment of his cellmate’s release on 11 July to stage his escape from Corbas prison, near Lyon.
“This is an extremely rare event that we have never seen in this administration and which clearly shows a whole series of serious failures,” the official said.
According to the BBC, the escapee was under investigation in a case linked to organised crime, and there is even the possibility that his getaway itself was “part of an organised gang and criminal conspiracy”.
Remarkably, after Elyazid climbed inside the large canvas bags used by prisoners upon their release, and his cellmate rolled the luggage out of the prison. There were no checks by staff, and the incident occurred entirely unnoticed.
The bag was so large and heavy that the cellmate to who it belonged requested a trolley to use as he left the prison, with guards even reportedly helping him get the duffle bag onto it before sending him on his way.
Once the prison staff had finally realised someone was missing the next morning, a manhunt began across France, and according to Vice, the escapee was picked up pretty quickly.
A mere 24 hours after the manhunt had been launched, the prisoner was found climbing his way out of a cellar in Sathoney-Camp, just north of Lyon. He did not resist when the police arrested him, French authorities confirmed.
However, his cellmate – who is now alleged to have plotted the escape with him – has not been found since.
Corbas Prison has been under scrutiny recently due to overcrowding – with critics claiming that the likelihood of this kind of escape only increases with prisons operating over capacity.
As of May this year, there were around 1200 prisoners in the maximum security facility of Corbas, which has a capacity of 678. This means the facility is holding nearly double the amount of prisoners than it has capacity for.
The number of prisoners being so high, “obviously makes the prison officers’ job somewhat more difficult than it might otherwise be,” prison service chief Cauwel told the local media.
He added that there was a possibility officers had not noticed the escape for an entire day, because as soon as a space becomes empty, the cells “are immediately refilled”.