Police thwart escape plan

2009-07-03 22:10

Madrid - Spanish police said on Friday that they had foiled an elaborate bid by an Italian drug trafficker to break out of jail that involved the use of a remote-controlled zeppelin. They arrested three people.

The three planned to use a 4m long zeppelin to deliver night vision goggles, climbing gear and camouflage paint to the inmate, which he would then use to escape the prison in Las Palmas on Spain's Canary Islands, they said in a statement.

The material would have been used by the prisoner, identified only as 51-year-old Giulio B, to scale down the prison wall at night at a little supervised spot where a car would be waiting to whisk him away from the jail.

The statement said: "He would have been transported to a foreign country where he would hide out while he waited for false identity documents and would have continued to oversee the shipment of drugs to Spain”.

One of the three arrested people had observed the security measures at the prison from a camouflaged tent set up on a hill about 600m from the jail to help develop the escape plan.

Motion detection sensors had been set up around the tent to warn if anyone was approaching.

The inmate was detained in Spain at an undisclosed date when he piloted a hydroplane that was transporting 200kg of cocaine from Mauritania to Spain.

- AFP