An inmate has escaped from a French prison by hiding in a bag belonging to his cellmate, who was being released after finishing his sentence, an official told local media.
The inmate “took advantage” of his fellow prisoner’s release to break out of the Corbas jail near Lyon, a city in the southeast of France, according to Sébastien Cauwel, head of prison administration for France, who spoke to BFMTV on Sunday.
Cauwel said prison officers discovered the man’s escape on Saturday morning.
He acknowledged an “accumulation of errors,” noting that an investigation into the incident had been opened.
“This is an extremely rare event that we have never seen in this administration and which clearly shows a whole series of serious failures,” Cauwel said, noting that the Corbas prison is overcrowded.
The French prison has an occupancy rate of around 170%, he said, “That makes the working conditions of our officers more complicated.”
The inmate in French prison, who escaped, was serving several sentences, France’s prison service said in a statement cited by European news agency AFP. He was also under investigation in a case connected to organised crime, AFP reported, citing an unnamed source close to the matter.
Last year, another prisoner in France escaped after gunmen ambushed a prison convoy transporting him to a jail in the northern region of Normandy. The fugitive, Mohamed Amra – also known as “The Fly” – was rearrested in Romania in February this year.
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