Inmates Make Easy Escape From Peru Jail--Guards Absent

Twenty-four inmates easily escaped from a Peruvian minimum-security jail when the guards failed to show up for overnight sentry duty, a prisons authority spokesman said today.

The government fired the jail warden and the seven guards who were due to have been at their posts in the jail in Tambo de Mora, 120 miles south of here, when the prisoners fled early Monday morning.

The escapees climbed over the building’s eight-foot walls. The 87 prisoners who decided not to escape were transferred to other jails.

The government filed criminal charges against the Tambo de Mora warden and the guards for negligence of duty and said the episode “showed there were bad elements who wanted to obstruct efforts to moralize and reorganize the prisons.”

The prisons authority director, Oscar Mejia, said last month that thousands of guards had been hired without a sufficiently thorough investigation of their qualifications.