All fourteen prisoners who escaped from the high-security hard labour
camp in the vicinity of Novoulyanovsk on January 18 have been recaptured.
On Monday morning the last two of the fourteen escapees were detained in
the town of Dimitrovgrad in the Ulyanovsk Region.
All the escapees were serving lengthy sentences for grave crimes, including
murder, robbery and drug trafficking. The regional prosecutors have said
that not only will the fugitives be punished, but the staff of the Novoulyanovsk
prison camp will also be brought to account for the escape.
The high security labour camp in Novoulyanovsk is considered as one
of the best prisons in Russia. The camp inmates there have the opportunity
to participate in sports and to take up correspondence study courses, rare
luxuries by Russian standards.
On Friday, January 18, fourteen prisoners escaped from the high-security
prison. After being recaptured, they said they had fled because wanted
"to die free." All the escapees are HIV- positive
and are held in a separate ward to prevent the spread of the HIV virus.
It took the escapees half a year to dig an 18-meter tunnel from their
ward, under the prison wall to waste ground next to the prison, using simple
aluminium spoons and bowls.
After being recaptured the escapees explained that in order to hide
their tunnel building operation, they flushed the soil they dug out from
the tunnel down toilets, hid heaps of soil in the pockets of their robes
and threw the earth out when walking in the prison yard.
Since all of the escapees are HIV-infected, other prisoners refused
to work together with them in the prison workshop, thus they had plenty
of time on their hands. Evidently prison wards did not bother to check
on them very often.
When they were not digging, the prisoners covered the hole in the floor
with tiles and moved a bed over it. When some prisoner was busy digging
inside the tunnel, his cellmates would put some clothes on his bed and
cover them with a blanket, so that if prison warders cared to check, they
believed the tunnelling man was asleep.
Early in the morning of January 18, the 14 inmates of the AIDS ward
fled. Only two hours later did the prison staff discover that the men had
escaped, by which time all 14 criminals, who had no false passports, no
cash, not even decent civilian clothes, had spread across the Ulyanovsk
Region.
On Friday, several hours after the escape, five of the men, serving
sentences for robbery and drug dealing, were detained.
On Saturday three more were apprehended. They were Igor Letov, Vladimir
Mitrofanov and Sergei Sharapov. Letov and Mitrofanov were sentenced to
21 and 12 years respectively, both for murder. Sharapov was convicted for
robbery and sentenced to 11 years. All three were wondering around the
town of Ulyanovsk, trying to avoid the police.
On Sunday one more convicted murderer Alexei Stroyev and convicted robber
Nikolai Gorbunov, were detained. Both were serving 11-year sentences.
When detained by police, almost all the fugitives were heavily drunk.
Maybe, that is why none of them resisted.
On Monday the Ulyanovsk Region's law enforcers launched a large-scale
search operation for drug dealers Alexei Balakhonov, Oleg Kalugin, Dmitry
Shevchenko and robber Vyacheslav Bogomolov.
They were all serving 10-year terms. Police officials said that the
crimes those men had committed were not as serious as those perpetrated
by the fugitives who had already been recaptured and taken back to jail.
All four were detained very soon. They did not offer any resistance,
for they all were too weak and too depressed to fight.
When asked what had prompted them to make their escape attempt, they
wearily explained that they had wanted to die
free men.
Regional prosecutors have launched an investigation into the break out.
The law enforcers are convinced that certain prison warders helped the
men to dig the tunnel, since they reckon that the HIV-infected inmates
were too weak to carry out such work on their own.
Criminal proceedings have been instigated and several prison warders
are to face charges of negligence.