Escape attempt with bedsheets thwarted at Paris prison

PARIS (AP) — French prison guards thwarted an escape attempt from the Paris region’s second-largest jail on Sunday, with French media identifying the would-be escapee as a suspected Islamic State sympathizer who dug a hole in the wall of her cell and rappelled out on knotted sheets.

The Justice Ministry said the prisoner was caught Sunday morning. Guards immediately inspected all of the women’s cells at the Fresnes prison to ensure that other prisoners were accounted for, and an investigation was opened, the ministry said.

It gave no other details.

Broadcaster France Info said the detainee was jailed after she travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State group. It said motion detectors alerted guards that she had escaped from her cell, after she climbed down on bedsheets through a hole.