According to the Evry public prosecutor’s office, an inmate from the Fleury-Mérogis penitentiary center escaped on Friday morning during an organized outing at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum in Paris. This 24-year-old inmate was granted leave to participate in a visit to this Parisian museum with other inmates, supervised by prison guards.
An inmate from the Fleury-Mérogis penitentiary center, in Essonne, escaped on Friday morning during an outing organized at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum in Paris, the Evry prosecutor’s office said on Saturday, confirming information from the site News17. A flagrant investigation was opened and a search warrant launched, added the prosecution.
A new escape
This 24-year-old inmate benefited from a leave of absence to participate in a visit to this Parisian museum with other inmates, supervised by prison guards, according to the prosecution and a union source. At the end of the morning, these agents realized that a detainee was missing and raised the alarm, according to a source close to the case. Police searched the museum and the area, to no avail. The man was serving a two-year sentence for aggravated robbery, this source said.
In mid-September, two inmates from this same penitentiary center escaped during an organized outing in the Fontainebleau forest (Seine-et-Marne), before being found a few weeks later. Since then “there has been better supervision” of these detainee releases, underlined the local secretary of the Force Ouvrière union in Fleury-Mérogis, Didier Kandassamy, contacted by AFP. The largest penitentiary center in Europe, Fleury-Mérogis prison accommodated 4,125 inmates on January 1, 2024, including women and minors, for 2,853 places, i.e. an occupancy rate of 144.6%, according to the Ministry of Justice.