News Digest

Quebec jailbreak: Interpol issues international alert as premier orders probe

Interpol issued an international alert on Wednesday for the three prisoners who used a helicopter to make a bold getaway from a Quebec prison. Interpol, which is based in Lyon, France, sent out what it calls an orange notice to law-enforcement agencies in 190 countries. Yves Denis, Denis Lefebvre and Serge Pomerleau escaped from the Orsainville Detention Centre in suburban Quebec City on Saturday when a chopper landed in a courtyard, scooped them up and quickly took off. Police say the three men were originally arrested on drug-trafficking and gangsterism charges in 2010, but the Quebec provincial police website also says Denis, 35, is facing first-degree murder charges while Lefebvre, 53 and Pomerleau, 49, are facing charges of murder and conspiracy to murder.

Such a notice warns of ‘an event, a person, an object or a process representing an imminent threat and danger to persons or property.’

The Canadian Press writes

News of the Interpol involvement came the same day as the Quebec government ordered an internal investigation into the aftermath of the escape because of contradictory information that has emerged since the breakout. Premier Philippe Couillard said it has been impossible to get coherent information in a timely fashion and that the government is not satisfied. This week’s brazen jailbreak is the second incident in the past 15 months in which Quebec prisoners escaped via helicopter. The administrative probe will also look into events that followed a March 2013 helicopter escape, when two inmates latched onto a rope dropped from a chopper at the St-Jerome detention centre and were spirited away.

The first priority is to get those three persons back in jail again. This is what threatens citizens’ security as we speak. The government is not satisfied with the flow of information, the level of information and the coherence of the information that it has received from the various actors, and there are four of them in this situation.

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard