MARSEILLE: A prisoner escaped from detention in southern France after casting his ballot in European elections on Sunday, a prison source and prosecutors said.

The prisoner, who was held in a jail in the southern city of Arles, “was on supervised leave” to exercise his right to vote, the source said.

He was accompanied by a probation officer and a prison guard, according to prosecutors and a prison guard union at the Arles prison.

He fled as he was leaving the polling station, at the moment when he was supposed to be getting into a vehicle that was to take him back to the jail, the source said. The man had initially been sentenced to a

three-year term for drug trafficking, then to eight years for pimping, the public prosecutor’s office said.

In a statement on Sunday, the FO Justice union in Arles said the prisoner was due to be released in 2026 and “was known for his calm demeanour”. “Nothing suggested such an escape as he approached the end of his sentence,” said the union.

French authorities are still hunting for a group of gunmen who killed two prison officers in an attack in mid-May that freed a convict linked to gangland drug killings.

The convict, Mohamed Amra, also remains at large despite an international alert issued by Interpol.

Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2024