While the hunt for three Quebec prison escapees stretches into its second day, the province's deputy premier has confirmed that security measures were loosened just one day before a helicopter plucked them from the grounds of the detention centre.
At a news conference Monday morning, Deputy Premier Lise Theriault said a judge granted a request to ease the conditions under which they were being held on Friday.
The relaxed rules include the possibility the inmates' handcuffs were removed, and one may have had access to a computer.
Theriault, who is also the Quebec public security minister, told reporters she doesn't know why the request was granted.
On Saturday night, 35-year-old Yves Denis, Denis Lefebvre, 53, and Serge Pomerleau, 49, boarded a helicopter that briefly touched down in the Orsainville Detention Centre compound. They then flew away, and have not been seen in public since.
Their daring escape marks the second time in just 15 months that prisoners fled a Quebec prison by chopper.
A manhunt is underway, involving law enforcement agencies in Canada and the U.S. Airports and military bases have also been alerted, police said over the weekend.
All three were being held at the detention centre waiting to stand trial. They are considered dangerous, and have now been placed at the top of the province鈥檚 鈥渕ost wanted鈥� list.
They were originally arrested in 2010, as part of the anti-drug trafficking Operation Ecrevisse. During that raid, police seized a plane, a helicopter, and $905,000.
At the time of their arrest , police said the three men were involved in organized crime.
Mackenzie Institute Security analyst Alan Bell said that this second prison break raises serious questions about the level of security at Canada's correctional facilities.
The Orsainville Detention Centre is a medium-security centre, Bell said, explaining that the inmates have a certain degree of freedom when it comes to associating with each other.
"How come they all ended up at the same location at the same time, when a helicopter just happened to drop into the courtyard and pick them up?" "So there are a lot of questions that are going to need to be answered in the coming days and weeks."
Bell said he was surprised when authorities did not launch an immediate investigation or inquiry after the first Quebec prison break in March 2013. In that case, the inmates were caught within hours of their escape from a prison in St-Jerome, Que.
"You would've thought that they would have put things in place to prevent this from happening because it's easy to do. It's very cost effective, it's not very costly to stop helicopters from flying into open spaces or any type of facility, let alone a detention centre or prison," he said.
have largely abandoned the idea of open-air courtyards, and older facilities can take steps to close off courtyards such as installing an overhead mesh.
There are also questions about lines of communication coming from the detention centre, as whoever helped the inmates escape would had to have known the schedule of when the prisoners would be outside. They would also have to know the general layout of the prison, he said.
In Bell鈥檚 view, this may point to possible collusion with facility staff. "Somehow, someone managed to get that information out," he said.
He added that, unless a major inquiry is launched and changes are made, these types of events will likely happen again.
"I now think there will soon be a huge inquiry across Canada in terms of correctional facilities throughout the whole of the country, primarily because if it worked twice, it can work three times, it can work four times," he said.
"So someone somewhere has to make a decision and make the changes required."
With files from The Canadian Press
