MOSCOW, June 16, 2024 (AFP) – Russian authorities said Sunday that they had brought a siege at a prison in the southern Rostov region to a swift end, killing the Islamic State hostage-takers and freeing their two prison guard captives unharmed. The prison service had earlier reported that the two guards had been taken hostage by an unspecified number of Islamic State detainees and had entered negotiations for their release. But a short time […]
Tag: Prison
Two French prison officers killed, inmate escapes, in jail van ambush
INCARVILLE, France, May 14, 2024 (AFP) – Gunmen attacked a prison van at a motorway toll in northern France on Tuesday, killing at least two prison officers and freeing a convict who had been jailed last week. President Emmanuel Macron vowed that everything would be done to find those behind the attack, as hundreds of security forces were deployed for a manhunt to find the attackers and the inmate who were all still at large. […]
Haiti jailbreak leaves 4 inmates dead, 2 at large: police
A jailbreak at a prison in northern Haiti led to a lockdown on the streets of the coastal city of Port-de-Paix, as authorities tried to recapture escapees with a pair still at large, police said Saturday. Six fugitives had been apprehended since the Friday night escape. Four others were shot dead. Gang violence beginning at the end of February — plunging impoverished and politically unstable Haiti deeper into chaos — has led to more than […]
S.Africa’s Pistorius released from prison
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 5, 2024 (AFP) – South Africa’s ex-Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius was released from jail on parole Friday and “is now at home”, authorities said, almost 11 years after he shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in a crime that gripped the world. Having served more than half his sentence, the 37-year-old double-amputee was quietly whisked out from the Atteridgeville prison on the outskirts of the capital Pretoria, avoiding the hordes of media gathered […]
Myanmar junta cuts six years from Suu Kyi’s 33-year jail term
YANGON, Aug 1, 2023 (AFP) – Myanmar reduced ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s 33-year prison sentence by six years in a partial pardon on Tuesday, as the junta struggles to quell bloody resistance to its rule. The country has been ravaged by violence in the two years since Suu Kyi was deposed in a coup and hit with 19 criminal cases ranging from corruption to breaching Covid-19 rules. There have been concerns for […]
Heat wave in US turns Texas prisons into ‘ovens’
HOUSTON, July 10, 2023 (AFP) – On the afternoon of July 4, as Americans were celebrating the country’s independence with elaborate fireworks displays, a prisoner named Joseph Martire passed out in his cell in Texas, amid the excessive heat that has been swamping much of the southern United States in recent days. In concrete, brick and metal penitentiaries, industrial fans churn warm vapor without really cooling the air. And with no air conditioning in most […]
Three inmates found hanged at Ecuador prison
QUITO, Ecuador, June 22, 2023 (AFP) — Three inmates were found hanged Wednesday in a prison in Ecuador, where more than 400 people have died in bloody gang clashes at detention centers since 2021, authorities said. During a head count at the Riobamba prison, guards “identified three inmates suspended, without vital signs, with presumed indications of hanging,” the country’s prison authority SNAI said. The prosecutor’s office said on Twitter the bodies had been identified and […]
US prisoners compete in unique Louisiana rodeo
ANGOLA, United States (AFP) — At the sprawling Louisiana prison known as “Angola,” inmates clad in black and white stripes go toe-to-toe with horses and bulls at a unique rodeo event now in its 57th year. The rodeo, described on its website as the “wildest show in the south,” features about a dozen events in which prisoners and professional cowboys compete under the watchful eyes of prison guards and the viewing public. Like a typical […]
The Russian ‘fortress’ where US journalist is held
by AFP Moscow bureau with Barbara Wojazer in Warsaw Agence France-Presse MOSCOW, Russia (AFP) — US journalist Evan Gershkovich’s court appearance in Moscow on Tuesday will be a rare break from his isolation in Lefortovo prison — a symbol of repression since Soviet times. The detention facility, which has housed a long list of high-profile figures, is engineered by the FSB security service to keep detainees in near-total solitude. “It’s a frozen prison, they’re isolating […]
Attackers slay five in new spate of violence in Ecuador
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AFP) — Armed attackers on Thursday killed three women guards outside a jail in southwestern Ecuador, while in a separate attack two people in a small boat were gunned down, authorities said. The massive prison complex in Ecuador’s biggest city, Guayaquil, is notorious for massacres committed by rival gangs vying for power within the penitentiary. Police said on Twitter that reinforcements “have been deployed in order to find those responsible for this criminal […]
Why books could help empty France’s prisons
by Alexandra Del Peral and Eric Randolph Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Deep in the vast La Sante prison in Paris, law student Morgane is discussing the classic novel “The Outsider” by Albert Camus with one of the prisoners. Adama finds some of the language tricky, but said reading is a “lifeboat”. “It allows me to escape, to think of something else. I imagine the scenes in my head. It’s as if I was […]
S.Africa’s Pistorius up for parole in girlfriend’s murder
South African Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius, who killed his girlfriend 10 years ago, will know in about a month whether he will be released on parole, his lawyer said Thursday. “We have been advised by the parole board that the hearing will take place on the 31st of March, 2023,” his lawyer Julian Knight told AFP. “It’s an internal process.” Pistorius, who is now 36, shot dead Reeva Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine’s […]
