- (AFP) -- A gang used rocket launchers and heavy weapons
to blow open the outer doors of a French prison and free one of the inmates
in a spectacular jail break.
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- A group of at least four men in police uniform attacked
the prison in Fresnes, south of Paris, to free Antonio Ferrara, an Italian
national convicted of armed robbery who had already escaped from jail once.
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- The men fired repeatedly with rocket launchers at the
prison doors to blow them open and at the watchtowers, causing serious
damage but no injuries.
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- They entered the prison through two separate doors and
then passed explosives to Ferrara, who used them to blast through the bars
over his cell window and escape, in the third jail break this year in France.
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- The entire operation at the Fresnes prison, home to some
1,800 inmates, only lasted 15 minutes.
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- Ferrara, 29 -- who was sentenced in January to eight
years in prison for two bank hold-ups committed in 1997 -- fled with his
accomplices in a waiting car, which police believe had been stolen and
fitted with false license plates.
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- The fugitive, also known as "Succo", escaped
from prison in 1998 during a doctor's visit with the help of an accomplice,
and unsuccessfully attempted to break out of La Sante prison in central
Paris last summer by using explosives.
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- French Justice Minister Dominique Perben, who rushed
to the scene immediately following the incident, deplored what he called
a "military-type operation", saying the culprits had used "weapons
of war".
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- Alliance, a prison workers' union, condemned a "new
type of commando whose members no longer hesitate to use 'weapons of war'
to attack our institutions."
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- A gaping meter-wide (three-foot-wide) hole marked one
of the prison's metal doors. Police found a machine gun, a pistol, explosives
and numerous spent cartridges at the scene.
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- Ferrara allegedly had close ties to 37-year-old Joseph
Menconi, who escaped from a Corsican prison on Friday, police said, explaining
that they suspected the two fugitives of collaborating on at least one
robbery.
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- Meanwhile, police also announced that two suspects in
connection with 17 armed robberies had escaped from police custody late
Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, where they had been taken from
Fresnes for questioning.
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- One of the men, Laurent Soltani, faked an asthma attack,
and when a police officer opened the door of the cell where he was being
held, Soltani hit the officer, used his keys to open Rachid Bekhaled's
cell, and the two fled.
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- Only Soltani has since been recaptured.
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- The two incidents were sure to embarrass the French government,
which has since taking office last year put law and order at the top of
its domestic policy agenda.
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