Pretending an urgent desire, the two inmates who were taking part in a running outing in the Fontainebleau forest on Tuesday afternoon left. A manhunt is now underway to find them.
The fighting is underway at Fleury-Mérogis prison. Two inmates escaped on Tuesday September 12, 2023 during a sports outing held in the Fontainebleau forest. While they were taking part in a running race, the two men, one incarcerated for drug offenses (less than a year), and the other for sexual assault (3 years in prison), claimed a pressing desire to move away from the group, according to a source echoed by Le Parisien. They would then have completely vanished into the wild, near the Gorges de Franchard sector, according to a police source cited by AFP.
“All means have been deployed. Search warrants have been issued,” assures the prosecution, which nevertheless concedes that “the detainees have not been found in their condition.” Contacted by our colleagues from Le Parisien, the prosecution also indicated that an investigation into escape had been opened.
Was the escape of the two men premeditated or did the inmates seize the opportunity offered by the sporting activity organized outside the walls of Fleury-Mérogis? The sports outing is an activity which is part of the social reintegration program offered to certain prisoners. “Without calling into question these activities, geared towards social integration, we are asking for better supervision of extramural outings” as well as a “better selection of profiles” of participants, declared a manager of the local FO Justice office in the Parisian prison.
In June 2023, an inmate had already escaped from Fleury-Mérogis prison, the largest penitentiary center in Europe. He had used a construction platform to escape the prison grounds, but his escape had only lasted a few hours and had not taken him very far from the remand center.
