By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Dozens of prisoners have fled from a detention facility in the southwest region of Democratic Republic of Congo after they broke out on Monday night to Tuesday, local sources say.
“Of the 104 prisoners being held in the central prison of Idiofa, 47 have escaped,” Arsene Kasiama, coordinator of a local civil society organisation told newsmen.
Majority of jails in DRC constructed by the country’s Belgian colonisers are overcrowded, making it prone to attacks by inmates.
Idiofa prison, located about 600 kilometres east of the capital Kinshasa was built in 1937 under Belgian colonial rule.
The escapees were all held in one of the prison’s two remaining cells and because they were “suffocating, they breached the wall and fled”, Kasiama said.
He stated that the officer on duty “fired several shots” in an attempt to prevent the escape, without killing any of the fugitives.
Confirming the prison break, Idiofa administrator Adelard Kintolo argued that the penitentiary “no longer conformed to standards”.
“The fence is there, but it won’t hold much longer, the walls are worn out. We ask the government to take this into account… they could consider the construction of a new prison facility to improve detention conditions,” he told reporters.
Prisoner rights groups frequently point to poor detention conditions in the DRC and have called on the authorities to work to reduce prison overcrowding.
