After the escape which took place on Sunday evening at the administrative detention center in Nice, the prefecture announced the opening of an administrative investigation to determine how ten people awaiting deportation managed to make themselves beautiful.
The first elements seem to indicate that the perpetrators had carefully prepared their attack. Around 7:45 p.m., dinner time to go off on a tangent.
During meal distribution
While the guards were busy monitoring the distribution of meals – “always a delicate moment”whispers a police officer – a group of detainees took the opportunity to isolate themselves in one of the CRA cells. This is adjacent to a small technical room containing a cumulus cloud. Access was obviously locked by a padlock that the fugitives managed to break. After climbing the water heater, they also managed to blow away the metal protections supposed to block their access to the attic. After removing a few tiles, they were now in the open air, but still inside the Auvare barracks.
Torn padlock and makeshift ropes
It was with the help of homemade ropes, made from sheets knotted together, that the detainees then let themselves slide onto the anti-intrusion fence which overlooks the center's promenade. Once there, they would have walked along the metal mesh to a neighboring building which they would have climbed, still using homemade ropes, before extracting themselves from the Auvare enclosure on the Vauban side.
The alarm system would have finally been triggered, allowing border police officials to stop the bleeding. One of the fugitives was reportedly arrested on Sunday evening. An investigation was immediately opened, under the leadership of the Nice prosecutor's office, to find the nine other escapees.
Dilapidated building
The move of the Nice administrative detention center is in the works. For the delegate of the Alliance Police nationale union, Laurent Alcaraz, this escape is the consequence “the dilapidation of this building and the lack of staff at the CRA”. “This Sunday evening, there were ten colleagues monitoring forty detainees. Obviously it's complicated. Especially since the requests did not stop with the Olympics. Today we also have to secure the end of year celebrations, while waiting for the arrival of Carnival and then the Ocean Summit… We are always asked for more with always less.”
