Two groups of migrants comprised of a total of 13 people had escaped a detention facility in the French city of Metz in just 48 hours.
The first group of five migrants escaped the detention facility on the night of June 28th after they were able to cut through the wire mesh fence. Two members of the group were quickly captured, with the other three migrants, two Tunisians and an Algerian, arrested a short time later.
On June 30th, a second group of escapees, consisting of eight migrants, took advantage of the first escape as repairs to that section of the fence were still underway, Le Republicain Lorrain reports.
A police car was parked in front of the area where the fence was initially breached, but that was used by the migrants as a step ladder to remove barbed wire at the top of the fence and then climb over and escape.
The five captured migrants from the first group were brought before a court on July 2nd and were each sentenced to four months’ suspended sentences. Those among the second group are still awaiting a court ruling.
Breaking out of migrant detention centres in France is not uncommon, with some escapes and attempted escapes often seeing a great deal of planning by the migrants involved.
Last year in the Hendaye administrative detention centre, located near the French-Spanish border, a group of three migrants managed to escape the detention facility after unscrewing a door handle to smash a glass window and used bedsheets to scale a 20-feet high wall.
It was even revealed that the migrants had been sold plans of the facility to help them plot their escape.
Other countries have seen similar daring escape plots, such as in Sweden earlier this year when a local priest was accused of smuggling a migrant out of a deportation facility in a suitcase that he had brought with him, allegedly for use in an adult baptism ceremony.
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