The police have spread the pictures of the two prisoners who are still on the run after they, and three others, escaped from the Turnhout prison in Antwerp on Thursday.
Three of the five were arrested again pretty quickly, but Oualid Sekkaki (26) and Abderrahim Baghat (38) are still free. The police ask for anyone with further information to contact them on emergency number 101. "If you notice them, we ask to not take action against them yourself, but the alert the police immediately," they said.
The method used for the escape remains unclear, prison authorities told De Standaard. The popular theory is that they somehow climbed over the prison wall, which is at least five metres high. “In theory there’s one spot where you could climb onto a roof and from there over the wall, but just for that reason heavy-duty barbed wire has been put in place, which is also electrified. The wall itself is electrified. It’s out of the question that they escaped that way.”
The information about Baghat is limited, but, just like the other four prisoners that managed to escape on Thursday, he has several violent crimes to his name, according to De Standaard.
Sekkaki was imprisoned for a shooting in which a 28-year-old man was shot in the knee in 2017. He has also been convicted before of attempted home invasion and the import and transport of 25,000 XTC pills, reports Het Laatste Nieuws.
He is also the youngest brother of the notorious 'escape king' Ashraf Sekkaki, who first escaped from the Turnhout prison in 2003, and managed to escape from the Bruges prison in a hijacked helicopter ten years ago.
Maïthé Chini
The Brussels Times
