The cult leader and two of his followers were flown out of the prison grounds
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A convicted sex offender and cult leader has escaped by helicopter from a prison on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, officials say.
Juliano Verbard, 27, serving a 15-year term, and two followers, were pulled on to the helicopter by three accomplices.
The three had pretended to be tourists when they boarded the helicopter, but then forced the pilot to land in the prison grounds before flying off again.
They then landed a few hundred metres away, and drove off in a waiting van.
The island’s police force was searching for Verbard, a cult leader, and two of his jailed followers, Alexin Jismy and Fabrice Michel, who escaped with him.
Verbard was jailed in 2008 for rape and sex attacks on children, and the other two for their roles in a kidnap.
“All our search procedures have been put into action to find them,” police chief Jean-Francois Moniotte told AFP news agency.
At the time of his trial, psychiatrist Gerard Toulfayan described him as an “extremely powerful manipulator with great intelligence”, AFP reported.
The two helicopter crew members were unhurt.
The pilot told a local radio station about the hijacking: “One of them put a gun to my temple while another threatened to set fire to a bottle of petrol he had in his hand with a cigarette lighter.”
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Full article and photo: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8020401.stm
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Prisoner escapes from French jail by helicopter
A sect leader jailed for sex attacks on children escaped in a helicopter from a prison on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion on Monday.
A policeman is at work, on April 27, 2009 in Saint-Denis de la Reunion, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, near the helicopter hijacked for the escape from Domenjod jail of Juliano Verbard, jailed for sex attacks on children.
Juliano Verbard, who was serving a 15-year term for rapes and sex assaults on children, and two of his jailed followers were hauled on board a chopper hijacked by three accomplices, a senior official, Jean-Francois Moniotte, said.
“All our search procedures have been put into action to find them,” said Mr Moniotte.
The helicopter landed on waste ground a few hundred yards away and the gang escaped in a van that had been waiting for them, he said. The two crew members were unhurt and were assisting police.
Earlier, the hijackers had boarded the chopper pretending to be tourists, before seizing control and directing the pilots to Domenjod prison, where it landed in the exercise yard and took on the escapees.
“One of them put a gun to my temple while another threatened to set fire to a bottle of petrol he had in his hand with a cigarette lighter,” the pilot told local broadcaster, Antenne Reunion.
Verbard, 27, was the guru of the self-styled “Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary”, a cult with no connection to mainstream Catholic institutions, on the island of Reunion, a French territory in the Indian Ocean.
He escaped along with two followers, the father and son duo Alexin Jismy and Fabrice Michel, who were jailed for their part in a kidnap.
He was jailed in February 2008 for attacks on children aged nine and 13, whose mother was the sect’s treasurer. He is also under investigation in two other cases, another alleged sex attack and the kidnap of a 12-year-old.
At the time of his trial, psychiatrist Gerard Toulfayan described him as “an extremely powerful manipulator with great intelligence.”
Verbard launched his cult in 2002 after convincing scores of followers that the Virgin Mary appeared to him every month. Adepts paid 20 euros each for the honour of taking part in an appearance ceremony.
Spectacular helicopter escapes have become a regular embarrassment for French penal authorities and, unlike Reunion’s Domenjod, jails in mainland France now often have protective nets over their exercise yards.
Since 1986, there have been 10 escapes from French jails in helicopters, most recently in July 2007 when gangster and murderer Pascal Payet managed to get out of Grasse prison in a hijacked chopper.
It was Payet’s second successful helicopter jailbreak, and he was convicted or organising a third which rescued some of his accomplices.
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Full article and photo: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/5229361/Prisoner-escapes-from-French-jail-by-helicopter.html
