Prisoner takes long rope to freedom

Wellington: It was a scene from a classic prison break: an old stone jail tower, a dangling rope of knotted sheets revealed as dawn broke - and an empty cell.

A guard raised the alarm yesterday when he came to work and noticed the sheets hanging outside the Mount Eden prison in New Zealand's largest city, Auckland, corrections officials said.

By then Aaron Stephen Forden, who was to be tried soon on burglary and assault charges, was gone.

Forden, 26, apparently climbed down the tower of the prison - built in 1856 and officially listed as a historic site - within clear view of a guards' watch tower but under cover of darkness, said Corrections Department northern regional manager Warren Cummins.

"I don't think it's a joke at all," Cummins told National Radio.

The bed sheets were "tied together and he's used them to get away. I think it's very serious and we'll want to have a look at how he managed that and ... do everything we can to stop it in future," he said.

Police had launched a manhunt for Forden.