Two Inmates Allegedly Sawed Through Their Cell Bars and Escaped Custody Using Bed Sheets: Reports By Christina Coulter

Two inmates in France escaped custody after allegedly sawing through the bars of their cells and using bed sheets to get out of the building before dawn, according to multiple news reports.

The escape occurred this week at the Maison d’arrêt de Dijon, the main detention facility in the eastern French city of Dijon, according to AFP, La Dépêche and Le Dauphiné Libéré.

AFP reports that prosecutor Olivier Caracotch said the pair “seem to have sawn through bars” and “fled using bed sheets,” according to a translation.

The detention facility, which dates to 1853, is overcrowded and in poor condition, holding 311 inmates in space intended for 180, according to the French justice ministry.

The fugitives are a 19-year-old who has been in pre-trial detention since October 2024 for an attempted murder in a drug-related case and a 32-year-old incarcerated since 2023 over alleged threats and violence against a partner, CBS News and AFP reported.

A union official, Ahmed Saih, said the inmates used “old-fashioned, manual saw blades.”

Staff had previously found saw blades inside the facility and had been “warning about the risk of a jail break for months,” calling for more staffing and for “gratings that cannot be sawn through,” Saih said.

“Prison is very hard here,” an inmate released on Thursday, Nov. 27, after eight months told AFP. “There were three of us in a cell: two on bunk beds and one sleeping on the floor.”

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The escape came 10 days after another reported breakout in the city of Rennes.

In that case, a 37-year-old convict with more than a year left to serve for theft fled during an outing to a planetarium. It was not immediately clear if he had been caught; France’s justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, fired the prison director, according to CBS and AFP.

Three prison directors’ unions issued a statement one day before the Dijon escape criticizing Darmanin for “devoting all the resources of a debt-ridden state” to high-security units meant for narcotics and terrorists while neglecting the “vast majority” of other jails.