TRNC launch investigation into prisoner who 'bribed officer to escape'

TRNC authorities have launched and investigation into an escaped Iranian prisoner's boast that he paid a policeman £20,000 to help him flee the country from prison. 

Mohamed Amine Khereoubi is being sought by police since vanishing from Lefkoşa State Hospital in April after being taken there under guard for treatment of a “burst appendix” from the city's jail, where he was on remand for alleged possession of drugs and bullets.

However he was tracked down by Turkish-language newspaper YeniDüzen, which quoted him as saying he had paid an unnamed officer to help him slip out of the hospital and take him to Girne port. From there, he claimed to have taken a ferry to Turkey and then to have travelled back to his homeland.

Khereoubi, who had been arrested in Dipkarpaz, boasted to the newspaper: 

If you can reach the right man then you can get anything done while in prison.

He claimed to have had a phone brought into the jail for him “in return for a few thousand lira” – but that he had been “badly beaten by guards” when it was spotted, leaving him needing the hospital treatment.

I was already in contact with a policeman, to whom I offered £20,000 . . . to help me escape and he agreed. He had told me to wait until I appeared in court, which was scheduled for July 13, but I couldn’t wait and when I was taken to the Lefkoşa State Hospital on April 20 it was an opportunity for me.