Report: Fatah al-Islam Inmates Plotting Mass Breakout from Roumieh
Islamist inmates at Roumieh prison are plotting to carry out a mass breakout from the facility, As Safir newspaper reported on Friday, a day after security forces thwarted an attempt to smuggle explosives to an inmate.
“We are not able to estimate the quantity of explosives, arms and communication devices that were smuggled to the Islamist Inmates,” a security source told the newspaper.
There are around 190 Fatah al-Islam prisoners at the prison's bloc B.
“We don't have a political cover to raid the bloc that the Islamists reside in,” the source added.
Thursday's attempt to smuggle explosive material inside sandwiches by a prison guard to inmate Charbel Shalita wasn't a first, the source added.
Shalita, the murderer of Roland Chbeir, was delivering the explosives in turn to the Islamist inmates, the daily reported.
150 grams of explosive material were discovered in the sandwich.
The guard that was detained confessed that Shalita had requested that he obtain the explosives that can be used to heat water.
Shalita was arrested in 2012 after confessing to the murder of his friend Roland Chbeir in October of that year.
Roumieh, the oldest and largest of Lebanon's overcrowded prisons, has witnessed sporadic prison breaks in recent years and escalating riots over the past months as inmates living in poor conditions demand better treatment.
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