Two 17-year-old inmates, one suspected of murder and the other of rape, escaped from the Quiévrechain juvenile detention center (North) on the night of Sunday to Monday by sawing through the bars of their cells before disappearing into nature.
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One was in custody for rape and the second for murder, according to a source familiar with the case who said they used saw blades. Both were in adjacent cells, she added.
At the request of the AFP news agency, the Lille public prosecutor’s office confirmed the escape of two young men aged 17 against whom “there is a criminal warrant”.
The public prosecutor’s office, which prosecuted their cases, opened “an investigation into the allegation of fleeing into an organized gang.” “You face ten years in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros,” he said.
According to a Ufap union source, the detainees, two unaccompanied minors, after sawing through their bars, “braided their sheets to climb onto the roof and get down the other side,” while “a vehicle was waiting for them outside.”
“The license plate was captured on the city’s video surveillance and they were driving towards Belgium, very close to the facility,” this source said.
The Quiévrechain youth prison is located on the French-Belgian border, 20 km from Valenciennes.
It opened in September 2007 and can accommodate 60 minors aged 13 to 18, the Controller General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty (CGLPL) said in a 2019 report.
“Revision”
The opening of the facility led to the immediate closure of the juvenile sections of the pre-trial detention centers in Valenciennes (North), Lille and Amiens.
According to Lille DISP, 38 boys and two girls are currently detained there.
“We discovered more than a year ago that young people could try to cut the bars with the forks and knives they ate with,” Guy Ryckewaert, first supervisor at Quiévrechain and a union delegate, told AFP. Ufap-Unsa.
“The prison administration considers juvenile halls as small institutions with people of low crime category, while unfortunately for us we have terrorists,” he lamented. “We have no watchtower, no electrical protection, while we are starting to have young people with great pedigrees.”
For the FO Justice union, these escapes are the result of “an explosive cocktail of staffing shortages,” “agent overload,” and “the housing of inappropriate detainees at this facility,” according to a press release on its website.
These escapes follow those of a prisoner from the Fresnes penitentiary on the night of Saturday to Sunday: he was hospitalized in the Kremlin-Bicêtre (Val-de-Marne) and escaped shortly before 1:00 a.m., barefoot and wearing only his underwear According to a police source, it was a hospital gown.
Two inmates of the Fleury-Mérogis (Essonne) detention center escaped in mid-September during a trip to the forest of Fontainebleau (Seine-et-Marne) on the grounds that they had an urgent wish. One of the two was arrested in Pantin at the end of September.