Prison guards syndicate warns “all prisons are the same”
The national prison guards syndicate (SNCGP) has told SIC Notícias that Vale dos Judeus prison had four watchtowers which were demolished “due to a lack of human resources”.
Thus the SNCGP is “not surprised” by the news today’s prison break.
Syndicate president Frederico Morais stresses he has been warning about the lack of human resources in prisons for years. What happened today makes “the Portuguese State look bad”.
“We’re talking about a prison that was one of the safest in the country until 2017.
“At the time, the government decided that it would demolish the video surveillance towers where there was a permanent guard watching the outside and inside of the prison because they didn’t have the human resources to apply certain measures that the government wanted, namely a work schedule. This measure was crucial for the security of the prison”, he said.
Morais filled in a little on the history of the escaped prisoners: Fábio Fernandes Santos Loureiro, he said, used to be “considered ‘the terror of the Algarve’” – and Rodolf José Lohrmann is “one of Argentina’s most wanted”.
“The Portuguese State looks bad because the national syndicate of prison guards has been warning over the years about the huge human shortage that exists in prisons (…) The disinvestment. The total abandonment by the government of prison services and Portuguese prisons has resulted in what happened today”, he repeated.
In Morais’ opinion none of this would have been possible if the four watchtowers were still in use. The prison has a six-metre-high wall and uses a so-called “horse neck” system, which makes escape difficult – but without surveillance, all the inmates had to do this morning was “make a huge sacrifice to get a rope, climb up and then get the ladder outside”, he said, using irony.
Morais added that there are very few prisons now with watchtowers staffed by guards. Instead, the focus is on video surveillance cameras, but these are not backed by response teams – so while the cameras roll – showing inmates climbing up ropes and down ladders – there is no one watching them…
“All prisons are the same”, Morais said, adding that when inmates ‘socialise in a courtyard’ there “isn’t a single guard to keep an eye on them”.
UPDATE: Authorities have warned the population that if they think they have seen any one of these men, they are not to approach them – as they are considered to be “extremely dangerous”, and would not think twice to use any means to evade capture.
Bizarrely, Frederico Morais tells SIC that the EXACT SAME GROUP had tried to escape from Lisbon’s top security Monsanto Jail, before all being transferred to Vale dos Judeus. He called the situation “an irony of destiny”.
Rodolf José Lohrmann has a history of breaking out of prisons. According to SIC, he escaped from a jail in Bulgaria, remaining ‘on the run’ for 14 years before being captured in Portugal.
More information on these men will emerge depending on how long it takes to recapture them (if indeed they are even still in this country). ND
Source material: SIC Notícias
