Region | Iraq
Tikrit under curfew after Al Qaida prison break
Iraqi authorities imposed a vehicle ban and a curfew in a city north of Baghdad Thursday after more than a dozen suspected Al Qaida militants climbed through a ventilation duct and broke free from jail.
- Agencies
- Published: 20:42 September 24, 2009
Tikrit: Iraqi authorities imposed a vehicle ban and a curfew in a city north of Baghdad Thursday after more than a dozen suspected Al Qaida militants climbed through a ventilation duct and broke free from jail.
Police officials said security forces were scouring the city of Tikrit, 150 kilometres north of Baghdad, for the fugitive prisoners, some of whom had been sentenced to death for working with Al Qaida.
The escape, in which at least one local official said police may have played a role, raises additional questions about Iraq's security forces and its penitentiary system as US troops prepare to withdraw from the country by the end of 2011. One of the men who escaped on Wednesday evening was recaptured by Thursday afternoon, police said, but 15 others remained at large.
The men had been convicted of various crimes, including murder, kidnapping and planting roadside bombs.
One of those still missing was Waleed Ayash, an Al Qaida leader accused of killing police and civilians in the town of Dhuluiya in Salahuddin province. Guards discovered the escape during their rounds in the local jail and found a ventilation duct that had been left open in the main inmates' hall.
A senior official in Salaheddin province's security operations command told journalists that the escapees had probably received assistance from officials within the province's prison system.
"It is clear there was cooperation with specific groups that helped them escape. Probably one of the officials helped them," said the official, who declined to be named.
In the aftermath of the escape, the head of the province's police anti-terror forces, Colonel Mohammad Salah Al Juburi, was fired by the provincial police chief, a police source said.
Interior ministry spokesman Major General Abdel Karim Khalaf said that several provincial security officers responsible for prisoner surveillance were arrested in connection with the escape, but he declined to specify how many.
The province's governor, police chief and other senior officials held an urgent meeting yesterday morning over the prison escape.
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