Murderers use turbans as rope in jailbreak

Seven murder convicts escaped from a high-scurity prison in south-western Pakistan today by using their turbans as a rope to scale the perimeter wall, a jail official said.

The prisoners sneaked out before dawn through a bathroom window in the prison hospital where they were being held because of overcrowding, said Abdur Razzaq Shah, deputy superintendent of the jail in Mach, a town in Baluchistan province.

He suspected they then disconnected the power supply to an electrified fence around the outer wall. One convict managed to climb the wall, and using a rope made from unwound turbans tied together, helped the others over.

Shah said one of prisoners was just two months away from completing his jail term of 25 years. The six others were also serving 25 years in separate cases of murder.

Police were hunting for the convicts in nearby villages, and authorities were investigating how they managed to break out.

The prison lies about 20 miles east of the provincial capital Quetta.

Shah said the prison has nearly 1,000 inmates, but capacity for only 550.