INMATES played tricks on warders to distract them from their duties before escaping last December, a commission of inquiry into the disturbances heard last Friday. The Lesotho Correctional Service’s (LCS) Sergeant Sekhohola Tšoeu told Justice Realeboha Mathaba’s commission that the warders easily fell for the trick.
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He said the six prisoners were at Maseru Maximum Security, and inmates in the adjacent C-Block faked rowdiness to attract the attention of the warders so that they could leave their posts.
He said the inmates who led the ruse were Sephatha Sephatha and one Thamae from the C-Block.
Tšoeu said the inmates in the C-Block cells were shouting in such a way that the warders believed that there was a real problem that warranted their urgent intervention.
He said it is a norm that after 9pm the lights are switched off in all the cells to allow the inmates to rest, “and noise is not expected to be heard after the lights are switched off”.
“About 15 minutes later, I heard some noise coming from the C-Block. The noise took about 15 to 20 minutes. I heard it because I was sitting outside with an officer called Lethole,” Tšoeu said.
He said his initial suspicion was that the noise was being generated by a mentally ill inmate, adding that he then decided to go and check what was happening.
“When approaching the block, the prisoners saw me as the Apollo lights shone on me, and they stopped the noise,” he said.
Sgt Tšoeu said he went to one officer’s post to find out what was going on.
“I found him already climbing into the cells where the noise was previously heard. They told me that one inmate was crying, saying he had been beaten by his cellmates,” he said.
He said the officer said there was another inmate in another cell who was also shouting and making noise.
He said he went to the cell where Sephatha was also heard shouting.
Sephatha told him that he was shouting to another inmate to give him some soup that he had promised him earlier in the day.
He said he then told Sephatha that his matter would be solved in the morning as he wanted to understand how he could ask for food at night when no inmate was allowed to move from cell to cell.
As for another inmate who shouted, Tšoeu said it was reported to him that other inmates were reprimanding him for urinating on the floor.
“I was a bit confused and suspicious about the reasons given by the inmates as to why they were making noise,” he said.
“I went to report to my chief officer ’Mabathoana about the noise.”
He said they even suspected that the inmates had clandestinely brewed beer using bread and they could have been drunk.
“It is unlawful to make beer or drink in prison,” he said.
He said they decided to go and look for the cell keys “but we were interrupted by a call from Chief Officer Thamae asking us to ring the alarm as the prison escape had just happened at the maximum prison”.
“We ran to the maximum prison where I found that the air bricks had been broken by metal to allow the escape.”
“The tower that is facing the maximum prison was not occupied. It has never been manned since the LDF withdrew its personnel that were using that tower”.
Tšoeu, who was a supervisor on the night of the escape, said by making the noise, the C-Block inmates managed to divert the warders’ attention from the Maximum Security cells.
Nkheli Liphoto
