Over 800 inmates escape Tunisian prisons

By BOUAZZA BEN BOUAZZA, Associated Press Apr 29, 2011

TUNIS, Tunisia – More than 800 inmates escaped on Friday from two Tunisian
prisons after fires were set in cells, the official news agency said.

Soldiers and security forces quickly fanned out in a search of the
fugitives and at least 35 were caught within hours, TAP said, citing
military sources.

TAP reported that 522 inmates from the prison in Kasserine escaped after a
fire in two cells, and another 300 inmates escaped from the Gafsa prison.

The two towns are both in Tunisia's center-west region, some 150
kilometers (about 95 miles) apart. Personnel at the prison in Gafsa were
on strike at the time, likely making the mass exodus by inmates easier.

The North African nation has been hit by social unrest since the country's
long-time autocratic ruler was ousted Jan. 14 in an uprising.

Some 11,000 inmates escaped from Tunisian prisons shortly after Zine El
Abidine Ben Ali fled into exile. Of those, several thousand have been
caught and nearly 2,000 turned themselves in after the Justice Ministry
warned the escape could worsen their cases, TAP reported.

Earlier, in the capital Tunis, police fired tear gas at hundreds of
Islamists protesting what they said were offensive comments toward Islam
by two teachers.

Protesters chanted "God is Great," and carried banners including one
reading "We do not pardon those who insult the prophet."

Several hours of peaceful protest degenerated when some demonstrators
sought to take on police, who immediately fired tear gas.

The demonstration on the main Avenue Bourguiba was the latest since Ben
Ali was brought down, hounded out of the country by protesters angry over
unemployment, corruption and repression.

Tunisia's uprising prompted protests around the Arab world.

Taliban tunnel more than 480 out of Afghan prison

By MIRWAIS KHAN and HEIDI VOGT, Associated Press Apr 25, 2011

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – During the long Afghan winter, Taliban insurgents
were apparently busy underground.

The militants say they spent more than five months building a 1,050-foot
tunnel to the main prison in southern Afghanistan, bypassing government
checkpoints, watch towers and concrete barriers topped with razor wire.

The diggers finally poked through Sunday and spent 4 1/2 hours ferrying
away more than 480 inmates without a shot being fired, according to the
Taliban and Afghan officials. Most of the prisoners were Taliban
militants.

Accounts of the extraordinary prison break, carried out in the dead of
night, suggest collusion with prison guards, officials or both.

Following a recent wave of assassinations here, the breakout underscores
the weakness of the Afghan government in the south despite an influx of
international troops, funding and advisers. It also highlights the spirit
and resourcefulness of the Taliban despite months of battlefield setbacks.

Officials at Sarposa prison in Kandahar city, the one-time Taliban
capital, say they discovered the breach at about 4 a.m. Monday, a
half-hour after the Taliban say they had gotten all the prisoners safely
to a house at the other end of the tunnel.

Government officials corroborated parts of the Taliban account. They
confirmed the tunnel was dug from a house within shooting distance of the
prison and that the inmates had somehow gotten out of their locked cells
and disappeared into the night. Kandahar remains relatively warm even
during winter and the ground would not have frozen while insurgents were
digging the tunnel.

Police showed reporters the roughly hewn hole that was punched through the
cement floor of the prison cell. The opening was about 3 feet (1 meter) in
diameter, and the tunnel dropped straight down for about 5 feet (1.5
meters) and then turned in the direction of the house where it originated.

But access was denied to the tunnel itself, and it was unclear how the
Taliban were able to move so many men out of the prison so quickly. Also
unclear was why guards would not have heard the diggers punch through the
cement floor, and whether they supervise the inside of the perimeters at
night.

A man who claimed he helped organize those inside the prison told The
Associated Press in a phone call that he and his accomplices obtained
copies of the keys for the cells ahead of time from "friends." He did not
say who those friends were.

Click image to see photos of the prison break in Afghanistan


AP/Allauddin Khan

"There were four or five of us who knew that our friends were digging a
tunnel from the outside," said Mohammad Abdullah, who said he had been in
Sarposa prison for two years after being captured in nearby Zhari district
with a stockpile of weapons. "Some of our friends helped us by providing
copies of the keys. When the time came at night, we managed to open the
doors for friends who were in other rooms."

He said the diggers broke through Sunday morning and that the inmates in
the cell covered the hole with a prayer rug until the middle of the night,
when they started quietly opening the doors of cells and ushering
prisoners in small groups into the tunnel.

He said they woke the inmates up four or five at a time to sneak them out
quietly. They also didn't want too many people crawling through the narrow
and damp tunnel at one time because of worries that they would run out of
oxygen, Abdullah said.

The AP reached Abdullah on a phone number supplied by a Taliban spokesman.
His account could not immediately be verified.

The Taliban statement said it took 4 1/2 hours for all the prisoners to
clear the tunnel, with the final inmates emerging into the house at 3:30
a.m. They then used a number of vehicles to shuttle the escaped convicts
to secure locations.

Reporters were not allowed into that building, but officials pointed out
the mud-walled compound with a brown gate and shops on either side.

The city's police mounted a massive search operation for the escaped
convicts. They shot and killed two inmates who tried to evade capture and
re-arrested another 26, said Tooryalai Wesa, the provincial governor.

But there was no ignoring that the Taliban had pulled off a daring success
under the noses of Afghan and NATO officials.

"This is a blow," presidential spokesman Waheed Omar said. "A prison break
of this magnitude of course points to a vulnerability."

At least 486 inmates escaped from Sarposa, most of them Taliban fighters,
according to Gov. Wesa. The Taliban said they had freed more than 500 of
their fellow insurgents and that about 100 of them were commanders — four
of them former provincial chiefs.

Government officials declined to provide details on any of the escaped
inmates or say whether any were considered high-level commanders.

The highest-profile Taliban inmates would likely not be held at Sarposa.
The U.S. keeps detainees it considers a threat at a facility outside of
Bagram Air Base in eastern Afghanistan. Other key Taliban prisoners are
held by the Afghan government in a high-security wing of the main prison
in Kabul.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said the military command in
Afghanistan had "not been asked by the Afghans to provide any assistance"
such as intelligence help in looking for the escaped inmates.

Asked if the incident would prompt a rethinking or delay in the planned
June turnover of the Parwan detention operation in the east to Afghans,
Lapan said: "I think it's still too soon to tell. I have not gotten any
indications of that, but it's too soon to tell."

The 1,200-inmate Sarposa prison has been part of a plan to bolster the
government's presence in Kandahar. The facility underwent security
upgrades and tightened procedures after a brazen 2008 Taliban attack freed
900 prisoners. In that assault, dozens of militants on motorbikes and two
suicide bombers attacked the prison. One suicide bomber set off an
explosives-laden tanker truck at the prison gate while a second bomber
blew open an escape route through a back wall.

Afghan government officials and their NATO backers have repeatedly
asserted that the prison has vastly improved security since that attack.

There are guard towers at each corner of the prison compound, which is
illuminated at night and protected by a ring of concrete barriers topped
with razor wire. The entrance can be reached only by passing through
multiple checkpoints and gates.

An Afghan government official familiar with Sarposa prison said that while
the external security has been greatly improved, the internal controls
were not as strong. He said the Taliban prisoners in Sarposa were very
united and would rally together to make demands from their jailers for
better treatment or more privileges. He spoke anonymously because he was
not authorized to talk to the media.

The Kandahar escape is the latest in a series of high-profile Taliban
operations that show the insurgency is fighting back. Over the past year,
tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO reinforcements routed the Taliban from
many of their southern strongholds, captured leading figures and destroyed
weapons caches.

The militants have responded with major attacks across the nation as the
spring fighting season has kicked off. In the past two weeks, Taliban
agents have launched attacks from inside the Defense Ministry, a Kandahar
city police station and a shared Afghan-U.S. military base in the east. In
neighboring Helmand province on Saturday, a gunman assassinated the former
top civilian chief of Marjah district. That's where U.S. Marines started
the renewed push into the south early last year.

___

Vogt reported from Kabul. Associated Press writers Amir Shah and Rahim
Faiez in Kabul and Pauline Jelinek in Washington contributed to this
report.

Amidst Political Unrest, Palestinians Escape Egyptian Prisons

January 31, 2011 by Ramona M. - IMEMC & Agencies

Four Palestinians who were held in an Egyptian prison returned to the Gaza Strip on Sunday.

The prisoners made their escape when thousands broke out of jails across Egypt amid an absence of police and chaos sparked by nationwide protests demanding the end of Hosni Mubarak's regime.

A spokesman for prisoners held in Egypt, Imad As-Sayyid, identified the four who escaped from Abu Za'bal as Mu’tasem Al-Qufa, Omar Sha’th, Muhammad Abdul Hadi, and Kom’a At-Talha.

Among those who returned Sunday was Mohammed Al-Shaer, a big name on the cross-border smuggling scene, arrested six months ago, and Hassan Washah, who served three years of a 10-year term for unspecified security offenses.

Mu’tasem Al-Qufa, jailed more than seven years in Abu Za’bal prison, said, “I was detained while I was on my way to Egypt, on the accusations that I am an affiliate in Hamas movement.”

Al-Qufa stressed that he was mistreated in Egyptian prisons especially in Abu Za’bal prison.

He said many Palestinians were with him in the prison, eight of them from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Other prisoners were said to have reached Egypt's port city of El-Arish and were expected to reach Gaza later, official sources said.

Political Prisoners in India: Jailbreak in Chaibasa, “Rebel trio flee with insider aid”

Frontlines of Revolutionary Struggle Jan. 20, 2011

(from The Telegraph, Calcutta)

[Three Indian news reports follow.--Frontlines ed.]

TelegraphIndia

KUMUD JENAMANI

Jamshedpur, Jan. 17: In a daring wee-hour operation, three hardcore Maoist rebels, under trial for the slaughter of dozens of security personnel in Saranda, made good their escape from Chaibasa Divisional Jail today, triggering a red alert across the Singhbhum-Kolhan region.

The unprecedented jailbreak, possibly with help from jail officials, has sent the state’s security establishment into a tizzy, with senior police officers rushing to Chaibasa and the West Singhbhum district police releasing pictures of the trio and detaining a sentry for interrogation.

Two of the three rebels — Motilal Soren, alias Sandeep, and Raghunath Hembrom, alias Nirbhay — were lodged in the jail three years ago for acts of insurgency in West Singhbhum.

The third and the most dreaded — Mangru Mahto, alias Dhirendra — had been transferred from Dhanbad jail. He was wanted in as many as 40 cases registered in Bokaro, Dhanbad and West Singhbhum districts.

According to West Singhbhum SP Arun Kumar Singh, the trio were last seen inside their cell around 7.15pm, when they were served dinner. They cut open the iron bars of the ventilator sometime after midnight and walked up to a godown on the premises.

They entered the godown, the door of which was surprisingly open at that hour, and escaped around 1.45am by cutting open the window grille.

IG (prison) Vijay Kumar Singh, who is in Chaibasa, said he was probing into the circumstances that led to the incident. Preliminary investigations suggest that a section of jail officials were hand in glove with the fugitives.

“Police and divisional jail authorities are probing the incident. I will recommend necessary action if the involvement of any jail official is proved,” IG Singh said.

Sources said night sentry Luise Bhangla was being grilled on the matter.

SP Singh too minced no words to say that the Maoists could have never escaped without help from jail personnel. “The lock and key to the godown door were found outside the jail premises and near the window through which the three escaped,” he said, hinting at insider role.

He pointed out that all keys to a prison were the responsibility of the jailer, in this case Mohammad Shamsuddin. The latter, who initially claimed that the Maoists had a duplicate key to the godown, was left tongue-tied when the lock and key were found outside.

Moreover, he couldn’t say why three hardcore Maoist rebels were lodged in a single cell against prison rules.

“There is no doubt that the undertrials have fled in connivance with jail officials. We will send a report to the government,” the SP said.

DIG, Kolhan, Naveen Kumar Singh supported him. “The jail administration is carrying out a separate investigation, but as far as our probe is concerned the jailbreak has been executed with help from insiders,” he said.

Senior police officers said the three prisoners were facing trial in connection with rebel attacks at Bitekelsoya and Baliba in Saranda forest in 2001 and 2002, respectively. They had killed over three dozen policemen.

The DIG said pictures of the three fugitives had been sent to all police stations across the Kolhan region and its adjoining districts. “We have also approached railway stations and bus termini, where photographs will be put up,” he said.

The state home department has taken strong exception of the incident. Principal secretary J.B. Tubid told newsmen in Ranchi that the department would act on the report submitted by the IG (prison).

The Chaibasa jail was built during British rule, way back in 1884, and not renovated anytime recently. The old and neglected edifice may have well aided the jailbreak.

——————————————————————————-

http://www.newkerala.com/news/world/fullnews-127531.html

Naxal jail break : Probe on to check bigger conspiracy

Jamshedpur, Jan 19 : The authorities are probing into a larger conspiracy in the recent jailbreak by three dreaded Naxalites from the Chaibasa prison in complicity with the jail staff, three of whom have been sent to jail.

The three–Motilal Soren, Sandeep Mangru Mahato and Raghunath Hembrum alias Nirbhayaha–fled the Chaibasa jail in Western Singhbhum district dramatically by breaking the window grills and climbing over the jail walll on January 17 morning. Jailer Mohammad Shamsuddin, night guard Louis Tigga and main warden Kamal Ram were sent to jail yesterday for helping the trio escape.

According to the IG Jail office sources, ” A bigger conspiracy into the case is also being investigated.” Involved in severe criminal cases including killing of more than 40 policemen in landmine blast, the Maoists fled as a part of a bigger conspiracy, sources added.

”It is also being investigated if the criminals were in police uniform when they escaped , and if the money recovered from jailmen was given by Naxalites,” the sources added.

–UNI

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January 19, 2011

Central forces to man porous state jails

AMIT GUPTA & KUMUD JENAMANI

Ranchi/Jamshedpur, Jan. 18: Police today raided several prisons and the state government decided to depute central paramilitary forces in as many as eight district jails harbouring Maoist leaders in a panic reaction to yesterday’s daring escape by three hardcore rebel leaders from the Chaibasa Divisional Jail. The jails, labelled sensitive for their vulnerability to rebel strikes in view of faulty construction and the number of Maoist prisoners lodged in each, are in district headquarters of Gumla, Simdega, Latehar, Garhwa, Palamau, Ghatshila (East Singhbhum), Chaibasa and Chatra, almost all of which are Maoist strongholds. “We are going to have extra security in these jails. We have asked the administration of the respective districts to ensure deputation of central paramilitary forces outside the jails in barracks,” inspector-general (prison) Vijay Kumar Singh told The Telegraph. Singh said they were also contemplating shifting hardcore rebels from less fortified jails to better ones. Moreover, there is a plan to build more cells and additional infrastructure to house more prisoners in almost every jail. Speaking to The Telegraph, Singh said despite upgrading three divisional jails to central jails to create more space, most of the prisons in Jharkhand remained over-crowded. “Except for the five central jails, the rest of the jails are overcrowded. What is worse is we do not have adequate staff to handle all the inmates. As a result, jail administrations are forced to take help of prisoners, which is dangerous,” he said. Singh said in most jails, convicts serving life tended to become the unofficial in-charge of the cell or even the wards. “As these unofficial heads are not accountable to the jail administration, they sometimes take undue advantage of the privilege,” said the senior prison officer. He pointed out that in the Chaibasa jailbreak too, some lifers were on the list of suspects. He said the administration of various jails had been asked to ensure that the jail manual was followed strictly. Highlighting some of the lacunae in jail security, he said the move to engage former army men had not borne fruit. Meanwhile, acting on tip-offs, the police today raided several jails. In Garhwa jail, the police seized 13 mobile phones, 17 chargers, a knife and other banned material. “Two SIM cards, a knife, a pair of scissors and a baton were also seized from inmates,” a senior police officer said. During a raid in Gumla jail, authorities discovered eight cell phones, 10 SIM cards and two knives. The IG (prison) said directives had been issued to district administrations and police to carry out raids in jails at regular intervals. The state has 26 jails, five of them central, 19 divisional and two sub-jails at Tenughat and Ghatshila. Central jails are located in Ranchi, Hazaribagh, Palamau, Jamshepdur and Dumka. Among the sensitive jails, the one at Garhwa lodges 150 rebels, 24 of them hardcore, while Ghatshila has 24, two of them hardcore. Chatra and Palamau jails have one hardcore extremist each, but that they are well-established rebel hubs make it all the more difficult for jail authorities. In Ghatshila for example, the jail is situated in the outskirts, and houses Naxalite leaders like Ujjwal Sarkar and a few other hardcore rebels. Birsa Munda Central Jail in Hotwar, Ranchi, is well fortified but the presence of hardcore leaders like Nathuni Mishtri, Uday Shrivastava and Amitabh Bagchi is always a concern for the authorities. Chaibasa jail, built in the British era, has several structural lacunae. It has one main wall as against the present norms of two. Also, the height of the main wall is about 12-14 feet instead of at least 18 feet, the norm for new jails proposed by the home department. Concerned over the Chaibasa incident, state home department is now contemplating to ensure all security measures line cellphone jammers, CCTV cameras, baggage scanning apparatus, metal detectors among other things for a foolproof security apparatus.