Algarve drug lord Fábio Loureiro, one of the prisoners who escaped from the Vale de Judeus Prison on Sept 7th, was arrested on Sunday night in Tangier, Morocco.
Read Convicted Algarve drug lord escapes prison HERE.
At around 10:00 pm local time, the "Moroccan authorities, with the collaboration of the Spanish authorities, in close coordination with the Judicial Police (PJ)" arrested the suspect, who had been on the run since September 7th.
"The international police operation was launched in less than 24 hours, with the strong support of the Spanish Cuerpo Nacional de Policia (CNP) and the Moroccan General Directorate of National Territorial Surveillance (DGST), based on credible information from the PJ, that Fábio Loureiro was in Morocco.
Fábio Loureiro had an international arrest warrant out on him and was on Interpol's most wanted list, the PJ said in a statement.
Fábio Loureiro has been convicted of the crimes of kidnapping, drug trafficking, criminal association, armed robbery and evasion and will now be "presented to the Moroccan judicial authorities with a view to his extradition to Portugal for the purposes of serving his sentence", adds the PJ.
According to the audit report on the performance of the surveillance and security services, which was prepared by the Security Services Division of the Directorate-General for Reintegration and Prison Services, the escape of the inmates "took six minutes" and was only detected about an hour later.
The group of escapees included two Portuguese citizens, Fernando Ribeiro Ferreira and Fábio Fernandes Santos Loureiro, a citizen of Georgia, Shergili Farjiani, one from Argentina, Rodolf José Lohrmann, and one from the United Kingdom, Mark Cameron Roscaleer, aged between 33 and 61.
They were sentenced to between seven and 25 years in prison for various crimes, including drug trafficking, criminal association, robbery, kidnapping and money laundering.
Of these, only Fábio Loureiro has so far been caught by the authorities.
The escape of these criminals on Sept 7th led to the removal of the prison director and the resignation of the then general director of Reintegration and Prison Services, Rui Abrunhosa e Gonçalves, who was replaced on an interim basis by Isabel Leitão, who was already part of that general directorate supervised by the Ministry of Justice.
The escape from Vale de Judeus led the Minister of Justice, Rita Alarcão Júdice, who ordered an audit of the security of Portuguese prisons, to be heard recently on the case in the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees, at the request of the Liberal Initiative.
