During the night from Sunday to Monday, two 17-year-old inmates escaped from the Quiévrechain juvenile penitentiary, in the North, by sawing the bars of their cells before disappearing into the wild.
One was in pre-trial detention for rape and the second for murder, according to a source close to the case. Both were in neighboring cells adds this same source, affirming that they used saw blades to overcome the bars. Contacted by AFP, the Lille public prosecutor’s office confirmed the escape of two young men aged 17, who were “under criminal arrest warrant”. The prosecution, which was following their cases, opened “an investigation into the charge of escape into an organized gang”. “They face ten years of imprisonment and a fine of 150,000 euros,” he said.
A rope woven with their sheets
According to a Ufap union source, the detainees, two unaccompanied minors, would have, after sawing their bars, “braided their sheets to climb the roof and get down on the other side” while “a vehicle was waiting for them outside “. “The license plate was noted by the city’s video surveillance and they left in the direction of Belgium, very close to the establishment,” said this source.
Located on the French-Belgian border, the Quiévrechain juvenile prison is 20 km from Valenciennes. According to the Lille DISP, 38 boys and two girls are currently detained there. It opened in September 2007 to accommodate up to sixty minors aged 13 to 18, indicates the general controller of places of deprivation of liberty (CGLPL) in a report in 2019.
“Cut the bars with forks and knives”
“We noticed more than a year ago that young people could try to cut the bars with the forks and knives with which they ate,” Guy Ryckewaert, first supervisor at Quiévrechain and union delegate, told AFP. Ufap-Unsa.
“The prison administration takes juvenile establishments as small establishments with people of low criminal category when, unfortunately for us, we have terrorists,” he regretted. “We have no watchtower, no electrified protection, while we are starting to have young people with big pedigrees. »
For the FO Justice union, these escapes are the result of “an explosive cocktail including the lack of staff”, “the overwork of agents”, and “the placement of inappropriate detainees in this establishment”, according to a press release on its website.