When it was inaugurated in 1983 in the town of Alcalá de Henares, the Madrid II Penitentiary Center was presented as a display of design that made it the safest prison in Spain. It cost 1,300 million pesetas (7.8 million euros) and it stood out, for example, that it had volumetric sensors and a closed circuit television to detect leaks and that it had been built on a large concrete slab to make it impossible that the inmates drilled tunnels. The pavilions where the cells were located were built from prefabricated concrete pieces to avoid butrons (holes drilled to break through a wall) and in the interior facilities all the details were taken care of. Even the griffins were chosen in such a way that they could not be used for the clandestine manufacture of sharp weapons.
40 years later, that boasted security has been called into question by the bizarre escape carried out on December 23 by a 20-year-old prisoner named Yousef Mohamed Lehrech, alias The Pastilla. Mohamed Lehrech, who had been imprisoned since April accused of having committed two contract murders in Algeciras (Cádiz), took advantage of the fact that when he went to communicate with four relatives, a portcullis (double barred door system that separates rooms) and a succession of negligence of the center staff to walk calmly through the main door of the prison. The security forces have been searching for him since then and have spread photographs of him on social networks to request citizen collaboration in locating him. El Pastilla, classified as “highly dangerous,” that day became the 22nd escapee in the 18 “escape incidents” (two inmates participated in four) recorded in Spanish prisons since 2003, according to the official statistics of Penitentiary Institutions. which EL PAÍS has had access to.
This number of escapees represents a minimal part of the violations of sentences recorded in the last two decades – more than 10,000 according to an estimate by this newspaper based on various parliamentary responses from the Government. Three quarters of this figure was carried out by inmates who took advantage of their leave to escape. Another part occurred during inmates' departures to go to court, when they were admitted to hospitals or when carrying out a cultural activity outside the prison. The inmate population in the prisons dependent on the Ministry of the Interior was 47,202 people last Friday, although each year around 80,000 pass through them at some point, according to sources from Penitentiary Institutions.
“The architectural design of Spanish prisons, especially those of more recent construction, and the electronic security systems make it very difficult for an inmate to escape from their interior,” says a veteran prison official who points out that this is the main cause in most cases. of the twenty escapes is what he euphemistically calls “the human factor,” in reference to negligence on the part of prison officials or security force agents. Another prison worker emphasizes the same idea and highlights that, in fact, in Spain it is “unthinkable” for an escape to occur like the one that occurred in 1962 at the Alcatraz prison in the United States, with open tunnels from the cells. that allowed the escape of three inmates. That doesn't mean, however, that there aren't interns trying to emulate them. In May, workers at the Logroño prison found, in an initial phase, behind the toilets of two cells, two buttresses with which the inmates wanted to reach the center's corridors, blind holes through which the different pipes run. “Even if they had succeeded, it is very unlikely that they would have managed to get outside and flee,” says a worker familiar with that frustrated escape.
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Prison sources also do not consider it feasible that an escape with a helicopter like the one carried out in a Paris prison by Redoine Faïd, a famous French robber, would take place. It was his second escape, after a previous one in which he used explosives and took hostages. “Using a helicopter for an escape was something ETA considered but they did not execute it,” these sources recall in reference to the plans with which the terrorist organization intended to get several of its members out of Huelva prison, and which were discovered by the Civil Guard in 2009. Despite everything, the security forces do not let their guard down that something similar could be attempted in the future. In May 2019, a report from the armed institute warned that there were drones on the market capable of carrying up to 100 kilos and that, therefore, could be used to facilitate the escape of a prisoner.
📽️The prisoner who escaped yesterday from the Melilla prison tells a group of young people how he escaped from the prison, through the “respect” area, in this video that has gone viral 👇👇👇 pic.twitter.com/I4ff2fYaVm
— MELILLA HOY NEWSPAPER (@MELILLA_HOY) September 16, 2020
All the penitentiary sources consulted indicate that, in the latest cases registered in Spain, the key element that led to the escapes was error, human negligence “or the relaxation of security protocols.” He spent with El Pastilla last week, but also on September 15, 2021 in Melilla prison. That day, Bilal M. climbed a wall of the penitentiary to allegedly recover a small package of drugs that had been thrown from outside and seeing that, despite having taken a long time to reach the roof because a shoelace even got caught, In a concertina, no one tried to stop him, he decided to escape. He was arrested at 5 p.m. after uploading videos to social media in which he boasted about his escape. Nine months later, Penitentiary Institutions concluded that much of the responsibility for that escape lay with two prison workers, whom it sanctioned with seven months of employment and salary as perpetrators of a serious offense due to “neglect of duties.”
The investigation of the escape that, in December of that same year, was carried out by Jonathan Moñiz Alcaide, also revealed negligence. The lice and his brother Miguel Ángel from the Valdemoro prison (Madrid). Then, a court investigated a prison official on suspicion that he had helped the brothers in exchange for money, although he finally closed the case. Two civil guards assigned to guard the perimeter were punished. One of them canceled the facility's alarm six times when it went off during the escape, mistakenly believing that they had been accidentally activated and not checking what was happening. According to investigators, El Piojo's escape had a long preparation process that included making a rudimentary key, sawing bars and braiding a rope with sheets and garbage bags. Jonathan Moñiz was arrested two months later in Madrid. His brother Miguel Ángel, five months after the escape. Nine days after the escape, the Interior issued instructions to all prisons to review the security systems and prevent “incidents and incidents that occurred during this year” from being repeated.
“The one between El Piojo and his brother has been one of the few escapes with prior preparation. That of El Pastilla, like many of the previous ones, have been opportunistic escapes. The inmate sees a hole in security, negligence or a lack of zeal on the part of those responsible for monitoring, and takes advantage of it,” highlights a prison official. This was, in fact, the case recorded last year in the Picassent prison (Valencia), whose development bears great similarities to that of Alcalá-Meco. A 36-year-old inmate who was serving a short sentence for minor crimes escaped calmly through the door of the prison after finding two doors open that should not have been open. “He did not have an escape plan,” prison sources recall. The Pastilla, neither.
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