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French prison laundry bag escape reignites debate on overcrowding
The Guardian
|July 15, 2025
A prisoner who escaped from a French jail hidden in a laundry bag has been rearrested, authorities have said, amid a continuing debate over prison security and overcrowding.
Elyazid A, 20, known as "the Joker" or "the Equaliser", was detained early yesterday morning as he emerged from a cellar in a village about 15 miles from Lyon-Corbas, the prison from which he escaped on Friday.
Prison officers had not noticed his disappearance until he had been gone for 24 hours. They said he had escaped in a large plastic laundry bag filled with clothes wheeled out of the prison on a trolley by one of his cellmates who was released on Friday.
This story is from the July 15, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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