Investigation launched into escape of drug dealer

AN investigation into the escape of a convicted drug dealer while on temporary release will examine the level of supervision by prison officers.

Bolivian Juan Carlos Alba was one of three prisoners from Mountjoy Jail performing community work in North Dublin when he gave two prison officers escorting them the slip.

The three inmates were renovating a house in Ballymun for a local arts centre, when sometime around 12.15pm on Tuesday Alba went missing.

“They (the prison officers) would have been at this place during all this time,” said a spokeswoman for the Prison Service.

There is nothing to suggest at this stage that the prison officers were not performing their supervision duties in any way.

Alba, aged 42, was given an eight-year sentence in July 2004 for his part in a sophisticated international cocaine-trafficking operation.

He had been brought into Ireland as a chemist by an international gang. His job was to extract cocaine which had been impregnated in liquid form into clothing using a solution of chemicals.

Gardaí seized cocaine worth €255,000 when they raided his makeshift laboratory in Kilkenny in July 2003. His sentence was backdated to that date and, with standard remission of one-quarter, he would have been due for release in July 2009.

The Prison Service said there was no reason why Alba wouldn’t be included in a work party. “The whole ethos behind work parties is that prisoners are giving something back to society and it is a form of rehabilitation,” said the spokeswoman.

In work parties, she said, a prison governor makes a recommendation to the Prison Service as to who should serve on it.

“The criteria we’d apply is whether he was behaving very well in custody, that he would be drug free, that he wouldn’t represent a security threat or a risk to the public. He met all the criteria and, on that basis, was included in the work party.”

She said there had been nothing suspicious about Alba’s behaviour while on the work party.

“He’s been out 10 weeks on the work party and there hasn’t been any issue.”

Fine Gael justice spokesman Jim O’Keeffe described the escape as “a total farce” and called on Justice Minister Michael McDowell to accept full responsibility.

“I find it hard to believe that a convicted cocaine dealer was made a prison ‘trustee’,” he said.