Entrance to the Madrid 2 Penitentiary, located between the Madrid municipalities of Alcalá de Henares and Meco, in an image.efe file
Since Saturday afternoon, the Civil Guard has been searching for 20-year-old Yusef ML, alias El Pastilla, after he escaped that day from the Alcalá-Meco penitentiary (Madrid), where he was awaiting trial. His alleged involvement in two contract killings. The escape was discovered shortly after 5:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve during the count of inmates carried out after family visits have been completed, as reported by El Faro de Ceuta and confirmed by EL PAÍS in several prison sources. These sources suggest that El Pastilla, who had personal communication (with physical contact) with relatives that day, took advantage of a security loophole to blend in with the visitors and avoid having to walk through the center's main entrance.
Sources close to the investigation conclude that the escape was not prepared and that everything indicates that it was not supported by prison staff either. In this sense, they emphasize that Yusef M. was at the center for less than three weeks and therefore had neither the capacity nor the time to organize it, moreover, this Saturday's visit was the first visit to the center that he enjoyed with family members . in the Alcalá Meco prison and therefore he did not know under what circumstances it took place in this prison. “He recognized the opportunity and took advantage of it,” these sources are convinced. Looking at the images recorded by the prison's surveillance cameras also points in the same direction. It shows the prisoner calmly walking out of the institution accompanied by his family. Law enforcement sources describe the incident as a “very serious” safety lapse and attribute it to “a series of errors.” The prison authorities have initiated an internal procedure to determine the circumstances of the events.
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Yusef M. was in preventive detention as the suspected perpetrator of at least two murders. The first occurred on October 6, 2022, when, allegedly on demand, he killed in Algeciras (Cádiz) a port worker from that city, whom the gang to which he then belonged, that of Nayim KA, alias Tayena, mistook him for a member of a rival Group, the “Piolin”. The second murder he is accused of was committed on April 12 this year and involved Tayena himself, whom he allegedly shot in the stomach at almost point-blank range as he entered his home in Los Cortijillos, in Los Barrios, also in the USA, left Cadiz province. Yusef was captured in Algeciras that same afternoon while trying to board the ferry to Ceuta to hide. The police also implicate him in numerous shootings carried out by mafias to control the drug trade on the outskirts of this autonomous city.
After his incarceration, Yusef was placed on the Special Monitoring Inmate File (FIES), a system created more than 25 years ago to increase control over certain prisoners and thus “ensure security” in prisons. Specifically, it was cataloged as FIES-5, one of the five existing files, and is intended for so-called prisoners with “special characteristics,” including those accused of crimes with links to organized crime or of particular gravity, as is his case was case. Since then he has been held in Botafuegos prison in Algeciras, from where he was transferred in early December due to the risk of being attacked by prisoners linked to the group of the second of his victims. The destination was the Madrid prison, a reference center for inmates under 21.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, more than 10,000 criminal offenses have been registered in Spanish prisons since 2005 to date (an average of more than 500 per year); although most of the refugees are arrested shortly afterwards. Of this number, the highest number occurred when prisoners made use of permission not to return to prison. Another significant number of violations occur during court trips, admission to hospitals or while engaging in a cultural activity outside of prison. On April 26, two inmates of the Aranjuez prison took the opportunity to go to the palace in that city and eat in a restaurant to escape.
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Attempts to escape from prison, such as those now carried out by Yusef M., are much rarer: fewer than thirty have been registered since 2005, according to various parliamentary responses from the Interior Ministry in recent years. One of the most famous was the action carried out in December 2020 by Jonathan Moñiz, El Piojo, and his brother Miguel Ángel, who escaped from the Valdemoro prison after breaking the bars of a window, walking across the roofs of the center and with one of Jump the rope they made over the perimeter fence. A third inmate who accompanied her failed in the attempt. The Moñiz brothers were arrested individually months later. Days after this escape, the Ministry of the Interior issued instructions to the directors of all penal institutions to review security systems and insist that the measures provided for in the protocols to prevent escapes are applied.