The escape of Yousef Mohame Lehrech,
El Pastilla
, the alleged 20-year-old hitman who escaped from Madrid's Alcalá-Meco prison on December 23, has come to an end in Germany.
Agents from the Federal Criminal Investigation Office (BKA in its German acronym) arrested him this Thursday around three in the afternoon near the Leipzig train station, in the east of the country.
The arrest occurred after those responsible for the Fugitive Location Section of the National Police alerted through the Enfast Network (Active Fugitive Search Teams) that El Pastilla could be hiding in Germany, as reported by the Ministry inland.
Sources close to the investigation detail that, during the month and two days that the escape lasted, the security forces searched for Lehrech first in Andalusia (specifically, in Málaga and Cádiz) and Morocco, his country of origin, was requested to collaborate. origin.
However, the evidence later directed the investigations towards Europe and, specifically, France and Germany, where he was finally arrested.
El Pastilla's escape from the Madrid II Penitentiary Center occurred on the eve of Christmas Eve in circumstances that Penitentiary Institutions are still investigating.
The first investigations point to the concurrence of at least four serious security failures that led to the inmate being able to leave the prison walking calmly through the main door.
The images recorded by the facility's video surveillance circuit recorded in detail the journey followed by the escapee from the communications module, where he planned to communicate with four family members, to the exit control.
Supposedly, the escapee mingled with people who were going to visit other inmates to go unnoticed and, after finding a portcullis open - a double door system that separates rooms with bars -, walk out calmly through the main door of the prison without anyone gave him a stop
That day he became the 22nd escapee registered in Spanish prisons since 2003, according to the official statistics of Penitentiary Institutions reported by EL PAÍS.
Several prison officials have been filed to clarify alleged responsibilities for his escape.
Days later, Interior published photographs of the fugitive on social networks and requested citizen collaboration after classifying him as “highly dangerous.”
His history supported it.
When he escaped,
El Pastilla
had been in preventive detention for eight months accused of being the author of two contract murders.
The first was committed on October 6, 2022, when he allegedly killed a worker at the port of Algeciras (Cádiz) on behalf of Nayim KA, Tayena, leader of a drug trafficking gang of which the detainee was a part at that time.
The investigation revealed that the victim of that crime was not the target of the drug traffickers, but that
El Pastilla
was wrong because he used a vehicle similar to the one driven by the member of the rival group, the Piolín, whom they intended to assassinate.
The second homicide of which he is accused occurred on April 12, 2023, with Tayena himself, until then his boss, as the victim of a shot almost point-blank in the abdomen when he was leaving his house in Los Barrios (Cádiz).
Pastilla
was captured in Algeciras when he was trying to get on the ferry bound for Ceuta to hide.
When he was arrested, Mohamed Lehrech admitted the crime to the Civil Guard and assured that he had thrown the gun used into the sea.
The Police also implicate him in a shooting that occurred at the beginning of April in the Juan Carlos I neighborhood of Ceuta, in which there were no injuries and which the investigation relates to the war then open between rival clans to gain control of drug trafficking. drugs on the outskirts of the autonomous city.
More information
El Pastilla, the 22nd escapee from Spanish prisons
After his imprisonment, El Pastilla was included by Penitentiary Institutions in the File of Special Monitoring Inmates (FIES), a system created more than 25 years ago to increase control over certain prisoners and, in this way, “guarantee security” within of the prisons.
Specifically, it was cataloged as FIES-5, one of the five files that exist and is intended for what are called prisoners with “special characteristics”, among them those accused of crimes linked to organized crime or of special gravity, as it was Their case.
Since then he had been in the Botafuegos prison, in Algeciras, but at the beginning of December he was transferred due to the risk of being attacked by other inmates linked to the gang of the second of his victims.
The destination was the Alcalá-Meco prison, a reference center for inmates under 21 years of age, from which he managed to escape in a bizarre way on December 23.
🚩🚩🚩 "El Pastilla" detained at a train station in #Leipzig (Germany) 🚩🚩🚩
Investigators from the Fugitive Location Section of @policia had an investigation open through the #ENFAST Network that placed him in the territory germano#SomosTuPolicía pic.twitter.com/bzRV2F7lCE
— National Police (@policia) January 25, 2024
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I am already a subscriber
_