New leads on escaped prisoners in Bougainville

Transcript

Police in Papua New Guinea's autonomous Bougainville region say they have new leads in a man hunt for 19 prisoners who broke out of the Buka police cells between three and four am on Sunday during a power blackout.

The Bougainville Police Commander Paul Kamuai, told Koroi Hawkins the escapees had been on remand for various charges including murder, rape and armed robbery.

PAUL KAMUAI:  Yeah yesterday morning 19 of the detainees left the police station.  They escaped from the police station.  They had to cut three bars from the holding cell and they made their way out. There was a blackout at that time and it was totally dark and there were two police officers there but they were warned.  The other prisoners shout and warned the policemen and that brought them to stop the others from fleeing.

KOROI HAWKINS:  So what has been done at the moment?

PK:  We are getting some information as to where they are.  They may have spread out already but from this morning we have been informed that they are in a group of about 13 of them some kilometres away from where we are at the police station.  Police will be checking out on them together with the outpost there.

KH:  What kind of crimes are these escaped prisoners in there for?

PK:  Various crimes.  Armed robbery is one.  Murder is one.  There's 19 of them.  We have checked on the list but we are still to come up with the detailed list as to where they come from and the actual offences that they've committed.  

KH:  Have you warned the public?  Is the public aware that these criminals are on the loose?

PK:  Yes we are doing that.  We have gone out on the media in Bougainville as well as in the country of Papua New Guinea but of course our communication in Bougainville is not that good to cover the whole of Bougainville with local media here.  Radio broadcasting would be New Dawn FM and the ABC and the radio they can only cover parts of Bougainville.  We are doing that.  We will to continue to do that.  It is not the first time that we have had escapes.  It happens at least twice a year and that is because of the ongoing overcrowding of prisoners in here.

KH:  In your past experience, as you said this is not the first time, how many, is it usually 100% recapture or do some eventually just lose track of where they've gone?

PK:  At least 50% or sometimes 60% we recapture them.  If they are Bougainvilleans, they don't have far to go.  We have the communities, they talk to us.  We have the community police, they give us information.  Eventually we get them back.

KH:  Where did they get the tools to cut the iron bars?

PK:  The tools may have come from themselves, from outside.  It may have not happened just yesterday.  They could have been cutting it for the past weeks and then until now the timing was right for them as the power was off yesterday morning and they had to go out one by one.