HÀ NỘI — The Police General Department has suspended 13 jail officers for negligence that resulted in the escape of two death-row prisoners from a prison in Hà Nội last week.

Following the incident, the Ministry of Public Security ordered 13 officials, including the jail superintendent, correctional officers and guards of the T16 detention centre in Hà Nội’s Thanh Oai District from where the prisoners escaped, to review their mistakes.

The ministry on Saturday also appointed a new prison superintendent.

The prisoners, Lê Văn Thọ and Nguyễn Văn Tình, were held in the same cell at the T16 detention centre and were awaiting their execution.

Both were sentenced to death for involvement in narcotics and other crimes.

The police arrested them again on Saturday and Sunday.

Initial investigations showed that the two prisoners broke their shackles while correctional officers were not paying attention and tunneled their way out of the cell at midnight last Sunday. 

False information

Police in the northern province of Quảng Ninh’s Hạ Long City are completing a dossier to penalise a man for providing false information on the two dangerous inmates to a competent State agency.

Last Thursday, Đoàn Văn Tính, 36, a taxi driver from Uông Bí City, reported to the police that he carried two young men with similar characteristics as the two escaped prisoners from Hạ Long City to Thái Bình Province’s Đông Hưng District.

On the way to Thái Bình, one prisoner robbed his phone and then forced him to take them in his taxi.

However, the investigation agency clarified Tính’s statements were concocted to serve his personal purposes.

According to the local police, recently, the city had witnessed cases where some individuals were reporting false information about robberies to the police.

These fake reports have caused confusion among the people, creating negative public opinion on security and order in the locality and have also led to time being wasted on verification by the authorities.

The investigation agency will complete the documents to penalise the above individuals. — VNS