Great French Prison Escapes.

April 14, 2003 4:05 PM

Another great French prison escape. Two members of an international drug smuggling ring hijack a helicopter, abseil into the prison exercise yard, and resuce a third man. Also, “last month, a commando-style gang used plastic explosives and a rocket launcher to blow its way into a prison near Paris and free a convict serving a sentence for organized crime. In a separate attack, men brandishing what turned out to be a fake rocket launcher freed another crime kingpin from a prison in Borgo on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.” In August, a man secretly replaced his brother, a Basque separatist leader, in prison.
posted by Mo Nickels (7 comments total)

that article said no shots were fired. In the movies, they always shoot and miss, but at least they actually shoot. wacky.
posted by th3ph17 at 4:15 PM on April 14, 2003

I always want a weblog about "good crimes." This would be a perfect contribution.

It would chronicle successful, daring, and often unsolved crimes that we see and hear about. The robberies that go right -- nobody gets hurt, millions are stolen, the criminals vanish without a trace, etc. Nothing like this exists, but I've been collecting the news stories (mentally, sadly) for years.

There's one about a gang of guys who walk into a Mall in our around Philadelphia (?) wearing one piece workman's outfits. They set up what looks like a perfectly legitimate ATM, and then leave. They wind up stealing about 1,000 credit card pins and get $50,000 by just having the machine appear to be broken or out of money. The card would go in, the user would type their pin, and then the machine would say the transaction could not be completed. The guys had to come back to the mall to retrive the hardware even. Suh-weet.
posted by zpousman at 4:34 PM on April 14, 2003

French prison guards surrender?
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 4:58 PM on April 14, 2003

French police have the reputation of Inspector Clouseua for a reason. French bashing has a long and sometimes creative history thanks to the comic genius of long-time rival Britain.

Why do we not have more dareing escapes in the USA? My guess is we are armed to the teeth most of these ideas would be shot down before they ever got out.
posted by stbalbach at 5:31 PM on April 14, 2003

more minkey permits should help
posted by clavdivs at 5:57 PM on April 14, 2003

Incidentally, for the last few months, there have been adds in the press stating that the government is recruiting prison guards.
I'm not sure it's working...=)

Oh, and thanks for the "minkey" reference, clavdivs, grrrrrrreat comment.
posted by XiBe at 2:08 AM on April 15, 2003

there have been adds in the press stating that the government is

so the Ministere De La Justice is a "press", placing "adds"?

Is this really incidental?
posted by clavdivs at 8:41 AM on April 15, 2003