After the conspicuous disappearance of security forces on the night of Friday, 28 January, conspiracy theories are still rife as to how and why several prisons experienced large-scale escapes in the following days. Al-Masry Al-Youm met with two escapees to hear their stories in hopes of shedding light on the issue. Thirty-year-old Galal (not his real name) was sentenced to six years for theft. He had already served three years at Wadi al-Natroon prison, which lies on the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road. His first direct exposure to sunlight came when a bulldozer tore down the walls of his cell-block on Sunday, 30 January. “After hearing gunshots, masked men with machine guns walked into the cells and told us to go home to our families…. or else they would shoot us,” he said. As he walked outside, he saw some cars waiting to drive inmates away, but he didn't see any prison guards. “I walked into the desert until I reached a small village a few hours later, where I called my family to come pick me up,” he recalled. Prisoners were not given any instructions except to “leave and don't look back.” Those who set them free, he said, spoke Arabic with an Egyptian dialect. Galal couldn't explain how a bulldozer was able to travel all the way to Wadi al-Natroon unimpeded. “All I cared about is that I was able to see my two young daughters," he said. "I'll turn myself in and serve the rest of my sentence so the government will leave me alone afterward.” Alaa (not his real name), in his early twenties, was serving a three-year sentence at Abu Zaabal prison in Cairo for attempted murder, since he had drawn a knife in a fight. He fled with other prisoners on Sunday, 30 January. “There was a lot of shooting going on around the prison cells,” he said, recalling that the masked gunmen who released them had also used tear gas. “Who else in Egypt has tear gas except for the state security forces?” “I would have liked to stay in prison since I only had two more months to serve,” said Alaa. “But they began threatening to shoot the inmates who refused to leave." Alaa got into one of the several cars that was waiting outside the prison and was dropped off in Cairo's northern Al-Marg district. “I was sitting between the masked men, but they didn't speak to me," he said. "They just dropped me off.” He then took various rides to get to his neighborhood located some one and a half hours away. “They didn't ask us to loot or vandalize, but what else could they have wanted when they let the prisoners out?” he asked. Galal said he hoped that Egypt's ongoing uprising would lead to the abolition of unjust laws. “I was innocent, and I wasn't given due process," he said. "I'm poor and had no one to plead my case.” Alaa thinks the country under the current regime has become rife with injustice, and blames the government for most of the country's ills. Both men expressed hope they would not be punished upon turning themselves in.
