Two inmates who escaped from the Owerri Custodial Centre, Imo state, have been arrested for alleged involvement in a fresh case of kidnapping and armed robbery.
The suspects, Okechukwu Edison, 42, and Sunday Morison, were arrested by crack operatives of the Nigeria Police Force’s Intelligence Response Team (IRT) led by DCP Tunji Disu.
According to The Nation, the suspects allegedly coordinated and participated in the kidnap of a female lawyer in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
The duo, along with two other criminal gang members who carried out the kidnapping, have been awaiting trial for 11 years in prison custody before they escaped during the jailbreak on April 5, 2022.
Preliminary investigations revealed that both suspects, who hail from Rumuji in Rivers State’s Emohua Local area, were arrested for long-time kidnapping, armed robbery, car snatching many years ago and remanded in prison custody after their arraignment in court.
After successfully coordinating the kidnapping of a female legal practitioner in the city, the suspects were apprehended by Crack detectives of the Force Intelligence Bureau Intelligence Response Team FIB-IRT on November 10, 2022 at Rumuola junction in the Rivers State capital.
“We left the correctional facility on Monday April 5, 2022 during the attack on the prison by a group of unknown gunmen who threw dynamites at the walls of the prison and commanded inmates to flee,” one of the suspects confessed.