20130818 Indonesia 30 inmates escape after setting fire to penitentiary
Indonesia Aug 18 2013 “Building” “Other”
Dead : dead 0 or unknown Burnout : 0 or unknown Injured : injured 0 or unknown
30 inmates escape after setting fire to penitentiary Updated: 2013-08-19-09:41
Another prison riot has taken place in North Sumatra after inmates set ablaze the Labuhan Ruku Penitentiary in Talawi district, Batubara regency, on Sunday afternoon.
There were no fatalities in the incident but 30 inmates managed to escape.
Head of the North Sumatra regional office of the Justice and Human Rights Ministry, Budi Sulaksana, said the riot started around 5 p.m. The inmates took control of the prison after the fire had been put out. He said security officers found it difficult to enter the prison because the inmates were fighting from inside the building.
“We have requested assistance from the police to secure the penitentiary but the situation is not yet conducive because the inmates are still fighting inside the prison,” he told The Jakarta Post on Sunday evening.
When asked whether there were any inmates who had been transferred from Medan’s Tanjung Gusta Penitentiary, scene of a previous prison riot, Budi said all the inmates were originally from Labuhan Ratu Penitentiary.
He added that hundreds of Police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) officers had been deployed by the North Sumatra Police to help secure the situation at the penitentiary.
Meanwhile, Labuhan Ruku Penitentiary warden, Sutopo Berutu, said the riot was believed to have been caused by friction between the inmates and prison guards.
Sutopo said his office was still investigating what had caused the inmates’ anger.
“We received information that initially the inmates were beating prison guards and then the inmates set fire to the prison,” he said, adding that the inmates burned down a data storage room.
He said the 30 inmates escaped through breaches in the walls and that police were still hunting them down.
Sutopo admitted that the prison was overcrowded with 874 inmates in a facility designed to hold only 251 convicts.
He said most of the inmates at Labuhan Ruku Penitentiary were drugs offenders.
Despite Budi’s statement regarding transferred prisoners, tribunnews.com quoted Sutopo as saying that 49 inmates who had been transferred from other prisons incited their fellow inmates to start the riot because relatives were unable to visit the transferred inmates.
Overcrowding has become an endemic problem in Indonesian correctional facilities.
Previously on July 11, 212 inmates, including four terror convicts, escaped from Tanjung Gusta Penitentiary in Medan after burning and vandalizing the office compound of the penitentiary.
The riot-induced fire left three inmates and two prison workers dead.
So far 113 inmates have been recaptured with 26 of them turning themselves in.
The inmates were rioting in protest at, among other things, patchy water and electricity services.
Following the riot at Tanjung Gusta Penitentiary, a number of inmates, regarded as ringleaders, were transferred to other prisons in North Sumatra as well as to a number of maximum security prisons on Nusa Kambangan prison island off Cilacap in Central Java.
Websource:The Jakarta Post
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/08/19/30-inmates-escape-after-setting-fire-penitentiary.html
Date:2013-08-19
Country:Indonesia