It is impossible for hundreds-not tens-but hundreds of prisoners to flee through an underground tunnel that was being dug for the last five months without any of the guards noticing.

The Justice Ministry of Afghanistan believes that there was an inside accomplice who helped the hundreds of Taliban members escape.  ”The massive security breach that allowed the Taliban to spirit more than 480 Afghan inmates out southern Afghanistan’s largest prison must have involved inside collaborators”, said the ministry on Tuesday.

Security guards outside the jails noticed the emptiness in the prison and realized that there had been a serious break out.

Justice Minister Habibullah Ghalib informed president Hamid Karzai the getaway was planned from inside the prison by the prison guards as well.  He also denoted that the international forces should have kept an eye on the plot.

“The escape of all the prisoners from one tunnel … shows that collaborators inside the prison somehow provided an opportunity,” Ghalib said in the letter.

However, he also noted that Afghan police searched the compound from which the tunnel originated about two and a half months before the prison break and he said that Canadian and American forces have been responsible for security improvements to the prison, reports the Independent.

One of the intelligence officers Gen. Tahir Mohmand, had warned officials in the prison that there had been an inside operation going on inside the Kandahar jail.  ”We had some clues that the Taliban were busy in some kind of plan to get their prisoners out,” he said.

The prison guards have now recaptured 71 escapees and found out more how they planned it.

Samiullah Jan, one of the prisoners who managed to escape  after serving 13 months of a 14 month sentence, said he was woken up at midnight and escorted to the tunnel, which was lighted and even had a pipe running through it that they were told was pushing out oxygen to help them breathe, reports the Independence.

“When we got out of the tunnel they let us go and said ‘Now you can go home. Go wherever you want.’ I moved around a bit but I didn’t have any place to go, and then the soldiers found me,” Jan said. He confessed at an agency detention in Kandahar.

Related articles:

Over 540 prisoner including Taliban commanders flee Afghanistan prison in Kandahar.

Read it at the Independence.

Image Source: Current