As many as 41 dangerous criminals, who have been charged with murder, kidnapping and theft, escaped the Venezuelan prison on Wednesday.
The criminals reportedly escaped through a "hole in the wall", from a jail in the central Venezuelan city of Los Teques, state of Miranda, managed by the CICPC scientific, penal and criminal research corps. Fox News Latino quoted the Public Ministry as saying, "According to preliminary information, at approximately 2 am on Wednesday, a total of 41 prisoners took advantage of a hole in the wall of the jail at the CICPC headquarters in Los Teques to flee".
Although a search has been launched to track down the fugitives who escaped the prison, as per statements from local press; CICPC officials, Miranda state police and members of the Bolivarian National Guard, which acts as Venezuela's militarised police force, say there is no trace of the offenders yet.
According to the broadcast from Union Radio, 23 of the criminals who fled had been arrested for murder, while eight others had been detained for vehicle theft, and four for kidnapping and the rest for unspecified "common crimes".
Meanwhile, there are accusations against the prison facility, which claim that the building which is meant to hold 40 prisoners, had stationed around 130 at the time of breakout.
These allegations gain a greater stronghold in the light of recent news regarding the death of 17 Venezuelan inmates who were on a hunger strike over prison conditions. The prisoners at the David Viloria Correction Centre had been protesting the inhuman treatment and human rights violations by prison officials since Tuesday.
According to reports from Al Jazeera, ingestion of some prescription drugs had resulted in the death of the inmates. However, it is not clear as to how all of them ended up consuming the same medicine.
Venezuelan Prisons Watch revealed that 17 inmates from prison in Lara and four more from one in the state of Maracay were dead.
