Thibaud Hue, edited by Solène Leroux
modified to
7:36 p.m., November 14, 2021
A story worthy of a film script: an attempted escape from Fresnes prison near Paris. She is a 31-year-old radicalized detainee who has been incarcerated for four years for trying to join the Islamic State group in Syria. She tried Sunday morning to make herself beautiful in the old fashioned way.
It’s not just in movies that inmates try to escape through a hole. The scenario was however well put together: for several days this woman digs in the wall of her cell, under her window. The stones end up moving and falling this morning at 7 am. So she slips through this gap, escapes with a rope of sheets and goes down two floors. The prisoner finishes her race in the walkway. It is here that she is intercepted by the staff of the penitentiary center, then taken back to a cell. An abortive escape, but it came close.
The lack of means in question
“The establishment is dilapidated. The walls are waterlogged, crumbling, so they can dig very easily and that’s what she did anyway”, criticizes Yohan Kara, deputy secretary general FO Justice for whom this escape is partly due to a serious lack of means. “On Fresnes, these watchtowers are not occupied and as we have few staff, the agents are mobilized on many missions at the same time”, he explains. “And indeed, if we had this reinforced security, we could have detected this escape attempt.”
According to a police source, this former jihadist was expelled by Syria to France. She therefore awaited her judgement. The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office has taken up the case.