10 "impregnable" prisons, from which it was still possible to escape

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The prison is a place for criminals, and it is assumed that the prisoners have no way to escape. But the craving for freedom is such that from time to time even the most guarded prisons run away, showing miracles of ingenuity. Moreover, history knows very interesting cases when escapes were made from prisons, about which there was a reputation for being reliable and unapproachable.

1. Lead Prison

Italian adventurer, writer and famous playboy Giacomo Casanova was once imprisoned in the infamous Piombi ("Lead Prison") prison for insulting religion and "rules of decency." The 30-year-old Casanova was imprisoned almost immediately after his arrest on July 26, 1755, and was sentenced to 5 years in prison. After he was denied a trial and did not even bother to explain on what charge the sentence was handed down, Casanova planned an escape with the help of an apostate priest who was in the next cell. The priest used a sharpened rod to punch a hole in the ceiling, climbed through it, and punched a hole in the ceiling of Casanova's cell. The adventurer left a note in his cell with the words from the Psalm "I will not die, but I will live and proclaim the works of the Lord." Casanova detailed this escape 30 years later in one of his books.

2. Imrala prison

Back in the 1940s, the Turkish government began to actively fight drug smugglers. Billy Hayes was a young American student who was arrested for smuggling 1.8 kilograms of hashish into Turkey. Four years later, two months before his release, he learned that his sentence had been extended to life, and Billy was transferred to a psychiatric prison hospital. In the end, his term was "reduced" to 30 years, and the American was transferred to Imrali prison on July 11, 1975, but he only stayed there for a few months. On October 2, 1975, after 3 fruitless escape attempts, Hayes escaped from the island prison, stealing a rowboat, on which he sailed to Bandirma. The locals hid him there. Then he went to Greece, from where he was deported to Frankfurt, Germany, where the future writer was held behind bars for several weeks before he was finally released. Hayes wrote about his escape in the book The Midnight Express, which later became the film of the same name.

3. Prison Libby

The Civil War in the United States was shameful in terms of dire prison conditions for both the Union and the Southern Confederation. The prison in the southern city of Andersonville was known for its devil-may-care attitude towards prisoners, but no one escaped from it. The same cannot be said for Libby Prison in Richmond, which had a single escape in 1864 and was truly epic. In February 1864. a total of 109 Union officers managed to escape Libby prison.

The escape was led by Colonel Thomas Rose of the 77th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, who with his captured subordinates dug a 15-meter tunnel leading to a nearby wasteland. Since no one believed that it was possible to escape from the prison, the guards did not even pay attention to the multitude of people leaving through the gate in the neighboring area. The alarm was raised only 12 hours later, and half of the fugitives managed to successfully escape.

4. Tower of London

John Gerard was a Jesuit priest who worked in secret because of the persecution of Catholic workers during the Elizabethan era. The priest became known for avoiding arrest for nearly a decade, but John eventually ended up in the infamous Tower of London, where he was tortured for alleged crimes. The Tower was known as a prison that many people only entered and never left, but the same cannot be said for Gerard. On the night of October 3, 1597, Gerard fled the Tower with Nicholas Owen, a Jesuit best known as "Little John." They were given a rope "from free", by which Gerard climbed down from the wall, despite the fact that his hands were mutilated by torture. After escaping to mainland Europe, Gerard wrote a book about his torture and escape.

5. Camp 14

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, better known throughout the world as North Korea, is known for being one of the most authoritarian governments on the planet. Under the local dictatorship, people have practically no rights, and those who are arrested for the slightest wrongdoing end up in "labor camps", which are often tantamount to death sentences due to the hellish conditions and lack of food in the camps.

Shin Dong Hyuk is the only person known to have been born in a prison camp, managed to escape and survived to tell the world about his ordeal. All his life he was starved, tortured and forced to work in hard labor, but worst of all, he was forced to watch the execution of his mother and brother. When he was 23 years old, Shin Dong Hyuk climbed over a high-voltage fence and fled to China, then South Korea, and finally the United States. His amazing test was documented in Blaine Harden's book.

6. Bastille

Bastille is one of the most notorious prisons in the world. On July 14, 1789, the fortress-prison was attacked by a mob of rebels, and this event is still celebrated every year in France as Bastille Day. The Bastille was used by the kings of France as a state prison and it was well known as a place from which no one could ever escape. Despite this claim, over the centuries several people have managed to escape. One such fugitive was Antoine de Chabanne, Count of Damartin.

Louis XI imprisoned Antoine because he was a member of the League of Public Welfare, a group of nobles who defied the king's authority. In March 1465, the count managed to escape by boat and return to the League. Later that year, the League and the king signed the Treaty of Conflans, which ended the dispute between the nobles and the king.

7. Santa's prison

Santé, located in the east of Paris' Montparnasse district, is one of the most infamous prisons in France and the only one located within the city. Since the prison went into operation in 1867, there have been only three escapes. In 1927, one man was released on a false order of release, and in 1978 a prisoner was killed while trying to escape. But the most interesting story of a daring prison break happened in 1986, when Michel Vazhur managed to escape with the help of his wife Nadine with the help of … a helicopter. While Michel was serving a long sentence for murder and armed robbery, Nadine Vazhur under an assumed name took flight courses. She then rented a helicopter and flew to the roof of the prison, from which she took her husband.

8. Liuying Prison

It may seem crazy to escape from prison in a helicopter, but this does not happen as rarely as many might think. Pascal Payet not only managed to escape Luyn's prison by helicopter, but he also helped others escape twice. Luynne is a maximum security correctional facility located in the south of France, and while it is touted as being as secure as possible from escape, the truth is that it has had several successful escapes.

Payet managed to escape by helicopter in 2001, and two years later flew back to the prison by helicopter to rescue several of his friends. Eventually, he was arrested again and placed in a prison in Grasse, where he was held in solitary confinement. During the Bastille Day celebrations, four of his friends managed to hijack a helicopter, which they used to free Payet for the third time. Payet was arrested again in Spain and is serving time in a secret location somewhere in France.

9. Stalag Backlash III

During World War II, the Luftwaffe set up a POW camp called Stalag Luft III in Sagan, Poland. The camp was used to house prisoners of war captured in the allied countries (most were from the United Kingdom). The camp was built on sandy ground, which is believed to make tunneling impossible. Despite this, with a titanic effort, British prisoners managed to dig three tunnels named Tom, Dick and Harry. The volume was found and destroyed by the Germans, Dick was used to store soil and supplies, and Harry became the main escape route for 76 people who managed to crawl through a tunnel 102 meters long and only 0.6 meters in diameter. Because of the sandy soils, they had to dig at a depth of 9 meters.

10. Alcatraz

Alcatraz is known for being impossible to escape from, but that's not entirely true. There have been several escape attempts in the prison over the years, but none have become as infamous as the one that occurred in 1962, when John and Clarence Anglin teamed up with Frank Morris to escape. The inmates fashioned dummies of their heads out of toilet paper, toothpaste, human hair and concrete dust, and put them in their bunks so that the guards thought the inmates were asleep in their places. They made a small hole with spoons in the wall of their cell and got into the service tunnel, then sailed off the island.

The official report says that three men died in the icy waters of the San Francisco Bay, but many believe they are still alive. Over the years, there have been stories of them being seen somewhere in Mexico. Their feat was immortalized in the hit movie Escape from Alcatraz starring Clint Eastwood in 1979.

And in continuation of the theme, a story about why Japanese prisons are scary even for seasoned yakuza and are considered the most effective in the world