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Over 60 cons at large
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POLICE and soldiers combed southern Guatemala on Monday for more than 60 kidnappers, murderers, rapists and drug traffickers whose spectacular escape from a maximum-security prison killed four people.
In the biggest prison break in the country's history, 78 inmates used assault weapons, automatic pistols and grenades to escape on Sunday from a prison in the Escuintla district, 55 km south of the capital, Interior Minister Byron Barrientos said.
Twenty-one guards and directors of the prison, known locally as "hell", were arrested amid accusations of complicity, Barrientos said on Sunday. He said that prison director Edwin Gonzalez and two bank robbers had masterminded the escape.
A recaptured escapee told authorities the convicts had paid four guards more than US$1,000 each and a "high official" about US$130,000 to win their co-operation.
The mass escape bore all the hallmarks of bribery of officials inside the prison, said Judge Jose Quesada, a former president of Guatemala's Supreme Court.
The prisoners had to get through 24 different locks and sophisticated security systems to break out, Barrientos said. The prison held 140 inmates in all.
Two prison guards, a policeman and a convict died in the escape. Nine prisoners had been quickly captured in the tropical countryside surrounding the prison. Another was caught on Monday morning. According to preliminary reports, four more were captured later in the day.
More than 1,000 soldiers were working with police on a manhunt in mountains and forests near the prison. Police were also scouring possible hiding places in Guatemala's sprawling capital of three million people.
Television news showed helicopters buzzing around the prison on Monday and a handcuffed convict being taken off in a pickup truck under heavy police guard.
Among the escapees are six men whose death sentences were confirmed by an appeals court last week for kidnapping and killing a university student in 1998.
A spokesman for Guatemala's Supreme Court said security would be increased for the judges who sentenced the escapees.
According to radio reports, about 30 fugitives held up a bus with 14 passengers and used it as a getaway vehicle.
Authorities in neighbouring El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico were on the alert in case convicts tried to flee Guatemala through its porous mountain borders.
The break caused widespread jitters among Guatemalans already exasperated by a sharp increase in violent crime in their Central American country.
"Demons Escape From Hell" was one newspaper's front-page headline on Monday.
In the last major Guatemalan prison break, 10 dangerous inmates escaped from a Guatemala City prison in January 2000. Only three were recaptured.
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