Arya News - An Albanian drug lord has used a metal file and knotted bedsheets to escape from prison – for the fourth time.
An Albanian drug lord has used a metal file and knotted bedsheets to escape from prison – for the fourth time.
Toma Taulant was dubbed “the wizard of escapes” by the Italian press after it was revealed that he had broken out of Opera Prison in Milan in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The 40-year-old used a file, allegedly stolen from a prison workshop, to cut through the bars on his cell window and then dropped 20 feet (six metres) to the ground with the aid of knotted bedsheets.
Convicted of multiple crimes, from drugs and arms trafficking to assault and violent robberies, he was supposed to have been languishing behind bars until 2048. Instead, he is once again on the run.
It is the fourth time that he has escaped from prisons in Italy and Belgium.
In October 2009, he escaped from a jail in the city of Terni in central Italy. He was recaptured in December of that year at an address near Milan, where one of his cousins was living.
Taulant was found to be in possession of three pistols, a large quantity of cocaine and stolen goods from previous robberies. The list of stolen items, drawn up by police and prosecutors, ran to four pages. He was found guilty of the charges and sentenced to eight years and seven months in prison. His cousin was acquitted.
In February 2013, he managed to escape from a high-security jail in Parma in northern Italy, using the same tried and tested technique – sawing through a barred window with a file and then dropping to the ground with the help of bedsheets.
In September of that year he was recaptured in Belgium and sent to a prison in the town of Lantin near Lieges. But he managed to escape from there too.
He remained on the run for two years before being recaptured again in 2015.
He was extradited back to Italy and sent to Opera high-security prison in Milan.
Prison authorities confirmed Taulant’s escape and have blamed the incident on overcrowding and a lack of guards.
Opera Prison has a capacity of just over 900 inmates but instead is crammed with 1,338 detainees – an overcrowding rate of 153 per cent, according to the UILPA prison officers union.
“The prisoners are managed by 533 guards, but for that number of prisoners we need 811 guards,” said Gennarino De Fazio, the union’s secretary-general. “It is an unsustainable situation – aside from harming the fundamental human rights of the inmates, it is also a huge challenge for the guards.”
Italian police said a nationwide manhunt is under way and an investigation has been opened into how he was able to escape from the Milan prison.
His latest successful breakout was front page news for the Milan-based Corriere della Sera newspaper, which described Taulant as “the wizard of escapes.”
The paper commented: “And that makes four. It doesn’t matter that he recycled a plan that he has used in the past,” a reference to the file and bedsheet formula of prior escapes. “Wherever he has been imprisoned, in Italy or abroad, Taulant has managed to escape.”
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