Prison Superintendent Dr Elliston Rahming told reporters that following the escape of Adlet Cilice, who was on a work gang at the Chaplain’s residence at the time, prison officers searched for the inmate for about two hours. After two hours of searching the escape then became a police matter.
“The escape was not an escape from the prison. The inmate was not housed in a prison facility. He was working in the Chaplain’s yard as part of a work programme and he left. By practice, whenever an inmate leaves without authorisation…a search team looks for him for about two hours. If he is not found after that it becomes a police matter. We leave it alone and it becomes a police matter to find him. Unless we get information (of his whereabouts) then an officer may go out and get him,” he said. “So we were hoping and praying that the police would capture him.”
Dr Rahming was fielding questions from reporters following a tour of the prison by Prime Minister Perry Christie.
The prison superintendent told reporters that Cilice was recaptured at Arawak Cay, after he was found with a weapon for which he could not give an explanation.
He was arrested under the name Michael Miller, a fake name he gave the arresting officer.
Cilice was then taken to Her Majesty’s Prison and was on the compound for days before anyone realised he had been recaptured.
“So he came to prison as that new person, charged after having pleaded guilty to that offence. Prior to leaving prison he was housed in the medium security institution. Upon coming back he was housed in maximum security. Therefore he would not have run into those same inmates that he had left or the same officers that he would have left. Had he gone back into medium, there was obviously someone who could have recognized him… So prison officers are to be credited with having made that discovery.” Dr Rahming said.
Dr. Rahming noted that there were no finger- print records available at HMP to have quickly identified Cilice. He said that the Criminal Records Office [located on Thompson Boulevard] is the only one in the Bahamas.
By: LAURA MATTHEWS, The Nassau Guardian
