Yousef Mohamed Lehrech, alias The Pastilla, the alleged 20-year-old hitman who escaped from the Madrid prison of Alcalá-Meco on December 23 and who was arrested a month and two days later in Germany, is already in Spain. Agents from the International Cooperation Division of the National Police transferred him this Wednesday from the European country to Madrid on a flight that landed around three in the afternoon at the Adolfo Suárez-Barajas Airport from Frankfurt. The images released by the Ministry of the Interior show the strong security device deployed upon his arrival. The escape of El Pastilla from the Madrid II Penitentiary Center, in Alcalá Meco, occurred on the eve of last Christmas Eve after at least four serious security failures that led to the inmate being able to leave the prison walking calmly the main door.
The Fugitive Location Section of the National Police, through the Enfast Network (Active Fugitive Search Teams), looked for Lehrech first in Andalusia (specifically, in Málaga and Cádiz) and requested collaboration from Morocco, his country of origin. However, the evidence later directed the investigations towards Europe and, specifically, to France and Germany, where he was finally arrested on January 25 near the train station in the German town of Leipzig. The testimonies of the faithful at a Cologne mosque where he attended and the images from a security camera near this temple were key to locating him. Since then, Lehrech was in a German prison awaiting his delivery to Spain.
The escape of El Pastilla caused several prison officials to be filed to clarify alleged responsibilities for the bizarre escape. The images recorded by the prison's video surveillance circuit recorded in detail the journey followed by the escapee from the communications module, where he planned to communicate with four relatives, to the exit control. Supposedly, the escapee mingled with people who were going to visit other inmates to go unnoticed and, after finding a portcullis open – a double door system that separates rooms with bars -, walk out calmly through the main door of the prison without anyone gave him a stop. That day he became the 22nd escapee registered in Spanish prisons since 2003, according to the official statistics of Penitentiary Institutions reported by EL PAÍS.
Days later, the Interior spread photographs of the fugitive on social networks and requested citizen collaboration after classifying him as “highly dangerous.” His history supported it. When he escaped, Lehrech had been in preventive detention for eight months accused of being the author of two murders. The first was committed on October 6, 2022, when he allegedly killed a worker at the port of Algeciras (Cádiz) on behalf of Nayim KA, Tayenaleader of a drug trafficking gang of which the now fugitive was a part at the time. The investigation revealed that the victim of that crime was not the target of the drug traffickers, but that El Pastilla made a mistake because he used a vehicle similar to the one driven by the member of the rival group, the Piolín, whom they intended to assassinate.
The second homicide of which he is accused occurred on April 12, 2023 and was that of Tayena himself, who had been his boss, whom he allegedly shot almost point-blank in the abdomen as he left his house in Los Cortijillos, in Los Barrios, also in the province of Cádiz. Pastilla was captured in Algeciras when he was trying to get on the ferry bound for Ceuta to hide. When he was arrested, Lehrech admitted the crime to the Civil Guard and assured that he had thrown the gun used into the sea.
After his imprisonment, El Pastilla was included by Penitentiary Institutions in the File of Special Monitoring Inmates (FIES), a system created more than 25 years ago to increase control over certain prisoners and, in this way, “guarantee security” within of the prisons. Specifically, it was cataloged as FIES-5, one of the five files that exist and is intended for what are called prisoners with “special characteristics”, among them those accused of crimes linked to organized crime or of special gravity, as it was Their case. At first, he was held in the Botafuegos prison, in Algeciras, but at the beginning of December he was transferred due to the risk that he would be attacked by other inmates linked to the gang of the second of his victims. The destination was the Alcalá-Meco prison, a reference center for inmates under 21 years of age, from which he managed to escape.
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