Petroleum jelly apparently played a key role in the first escape from the country’s most secure prison, the Pretoria News reported on Monday.
Its website quoted sources as saying the ”Houdini” appeared to have stripped and covered his entire body with petroleum jelly to climb out of a window measuring 20cm x 60cm.
Annanias Mathe, (29) a ”dangerous” detainee awaiting trial, escaped from Pretoria’s C-Max prison on Saturday night, a first-time feat since the institution was built 36 years ago.
Mathe, a Mozambican, was rearrested on December 4 last year after escaping from police custody. He had been on the run for about seven months. He faced 51 charges, including murder, attempted murder, rape, hijacking and armed robbery.
The director of communications at the Department of Correctional Services, Bheki Manzini, said Mathe was detained in the A6 section, which houses hardened criminals who are regarded as escape risks.
”It is alleged Mathe uncuffed himself, broke through a number of small windows and forced himself out on to the centre’s roof — an escape carried out with military precision.”
The escape was noticed by an official who came in for night shift.
Mathe apparently broke two steel bars from his bed which he wedged on either side of the window to help him slide his shoulders through.
He apparently took another steel pipe from his bed and made a hook. He then tied his clothes and bed linen to it and used that to slide out of the cell down the firewall.
Halfway down, Mathe used some of the grime he had collected on his way down the wall to write a note to prison officials saying: ”Fuck you.”
This was not his first escape from custody.
Manzini said: ”In April 2005 he escaped while in police custody. At the time he was housed next to the staff office to monitor him closely.”
It initially took a task team nine months to arrest Mathe. Captain Arnold Boonstra, who formed part of this team, described the man as ”a scrawny little guy”.
”It took my colleague and I; we’re both over six feet and weigh more than 140kg; nearly 15 minutes to apprehend and subdue him. He has extensive military training, which we believe enabled him to escape in the manner he did,” said Boonstra. – Sapa