Fugitives escaped Vale de Judeus prison in September
After nearly five months on the run, the last two fugitives from Portugal’s Vale de Judeus prison, Rodolfo José Lohrmann and Mark Cameron Roscaleer, have been recaptured in Alicante, Spain.
The arrests, carried out by Spain’s National Police, mark the end of an international manhunt coordinated by Portugal’s Polícia Judiciária (PJ) police.
Lohrmann, 59, and Roscaleer, 35, had been at large since their escape along with three others on September 7, 2024. “Since then, PJ police had been collecting information that helped tract them down to southern Spain,” the criminal police force says in a statement to the press.
Both fugitives were subjects of international arrest warrants and were listed on Interpol’s Red Notice, making them high-priority targets for law enforcement across Europe.
Lohrmann, an Argentine national, has a long history of involvement in organised and violent crime at an international level. His criminal record includes charges of criminal association, money laundering, bank robbery, illegal possession of firearms, document forgery, and aggravated theft. Lohrmann was serving a 20-year prison sentence, which began on November 16, 2016.
Meanwhile, Roscaleer, a British citizen, was also classified as a dangerous criminal, linked to violent offenses including armed robbery and kidnapping. His sentence – nine years behind bars – began on May 10, 2019.
The last fugitive to have been caught was Shergili Farjiani, a Georgian citizen, who was recaptured in Italy in December. His arrest in Padua followed the earlier recapture of two fellow fugitives – Fábio Loureiro, from the Algarve, who was tracked down in Morocco, and Fernando Ferreira, caught in Trás-os-Montes.
The daring prison escape became a national scandal which highlighted the alarming security failures that exist at Portuguese prison, later exposed in an audit.
