1 fugitive who escaped from a French prison with recaptured sheets, but 1 remains at large

Dijon, France — France captured one of two on Friday detainees who used sheets to escape from prison a day earlier after cutting the bars of his cell, a prosecutor said.

France has one of the worst prison overcrowdings in Europe, and staff unions have complained that the state is neglecting regular prisons while moving drug criminals to new high-security prisons.

The man was arrested south of Dijon, where the escape occurred, said the eastern city’s prosecutor, Olivier Caracotch.

He said the trapped person was thought to be the eldest of the couple, a 32-year-old man accused of violence against his partner.

That would mean a 19-year-old suspected of attempted murder in a drug-related case would still be at large. A local prosecutor said Thursday that he was suspected of having been recruited to settle scores in a dispute involving drug trafficking.

Caracotch said about 100 police officers were still searching for him.

Guards realized the two men had fled before dawn Thursday.

The 32-year-old had left a message in his cell, saying he had been detained “too long,” the prosecutor said. It was not immediately clear how long he was detained.

Union leader Ahmed Saih, who represents prison officials at the jail, told News on Thursday that inmates used “old-fashioned hand saw blades” to escape their cell, but Caracotch did not provide further details on how exactly they had used the bedding.

The Minister of the Interior, Laurent Núñez, congratulated the police in a message on X for having arrested one of the fugitives.

The Dijon prison, built in 1853, is in poor condition, with 311 inmates for 180 places, according to the Ministry of Justice.

A prisoner released on Thursday told News he was one of three in a cell, “two in bunk beds and one sleeping on the floor.”

The prison escape comes less than two weeks after another escape in the northwestern city of Rennes.

A 37-year-old prisoner, who still had more than a year left on his sentence for robbery, fled on November 14 during an excursion with other prisoners to the city’s planetarium. He was captured on Thursday in the nearby city of Nantes.

Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin fired the director of the Rennes prison, sparking outrage among unions.

Three unions of prison directors on Wednesday attacked the tough right-wing minister, who is pushing a plan to lock up the most dangerous drug traffickers in maximum security prisons.

They accused him of “devoting all the resources of an indebted state” to high-security prisons for those accused of drug trafficking and jihadist attacks, and of neglecting the “vast majority” of other prisons.

The escape comes after thieves broke into the Louvre museum in Paris in broad daylight last month, making off with priceless imperial jewels.

That investigation is ongoing, with several people arrested and charged in the case.