Guard “being heard today by PJ”
One of the prison guards on duty at Vale de Judeus jail on the day that five inmates broke out will be heard today by the PJ as part of the criminal case opened by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, his lawyer has revealed.
Pedro Proença, the lawyer acting for the National Prison Guard Union (SNCGP) in this matter, told Lusa that the guard is also one of those targeted in the internal disciplinary case that has been opened into the incident by the Prison Services Audit and Inspection.
The guard, this far unidentified, is being heard at 10am.
According to Pedro Proença, two other guards were heard yesterday, at the jail, as witnesses.
Up until today, the internal inquiry process has heard five or six guards as witnesses and two who are being “targeted”, said Proença.
Eight other guards are due to be heard next week, on September 19, and on September 23.
One of the most important aspects of the ongoing inquiries is related to failures in the jail’s video surveillance and who is (or should be/ should have been) responsible for this task.
Frederico Morais, president of the SNCGP, has expressed his own “conviction” that there was no complicity or responsibility on the part of the prison guards who were on duty on the day of the escape. He has told Lusa that the union has been warning about the enormous security problems in prisons – and for the guards themselves who work in prisons full of inmates – “for years”.
Meantime, Expresso has been investigating the backstory to the jailbreak, which has highlighted so many ‘failings’ within the system.
It appears that the impetus for the escape came from the arrival at Vale de Judeus of ‘Argentina’s most wanted’ – Robert Lohrmann – transferred from Lisbon’s Monsanto (even higher-security) jail.
Lohrmann was the ‘common denominator’ that linked most of the men (who had also previously been in Monsanto), and “almost all” of whom had had “experience in escapes from prisons”.
“Lohrmann was the brain of the operation”, a source has told the paper. He is, apparently, the “most intelligent”, with access to ‘big money’, and he knows how to hide information.
Along with Portuguese prisoner Fernando Ferreira, who authorities believe was the one responsible for enlisting the help of the accomplices who put up the ladder/ drove the getaway car, Lohrmann studied the routines of the guards, and the ‘fragilities of the system’ that gave the men the opportunity that they seized, with stunning success, on Saturday morning.
Expresso reveals that there are 47 frames of CCTV surveillance that “tell the story from the preparation of the escape” – in which other inmates hung washing lines up to ‘block out cameras access’ to the pavilions where the inmates were housed, and where a rubbish bin was strategically placed against a wall (to help the men get over it) – to the moment where guards realise what has happened.
“For many sources heard” in Expresso’s investigation the failings that led to this escape “were not limited to the morning of the breakout” – they include questions over “how is it possible to put inmates together, all of whom have a history of great violence, when they know each other”, and have a past in which they have escaped, or tried to escape, before?
One aspect now seems clear, however: authorities hold little hope that these men remain on national territory. They accept that they will have ‘split up’ shortly after the escape, and made their ways over borders into Spain, and well beyond, by now.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
