Drug smuggler in solitary confinement after trying to escape jail by carving hole in wall
Felix Dorfin got out of a police detention centre earlier in the year but was caught after 10 days on the run.
Friday 4 October 2019 17:51, UK
A convicted French drug smuggler has been placed in solitary confinement after being caught trying to escape for the second time in Indonesia.
Guards at Mataram prison on the tourist island of Lombok caught Felix Dorfin trying to carve a hole in his cell wall earlier this week, chief warden Tri Saptono Sambudji said.
Dorfin told authorities he had been working on the hole for the past month, Mr Sambudji added.
The piece of iron the 35-year-old was using to damage the wall was wrapped in cloth to reduce the noise.
In January, aided by a female officer, Dorfin escaped from a police detention centre by punching holes in his cell window, before being recaptured after 10 days on the run.
The officer, who received money from him, was sacked and sentenced to three years in prison last month.
Dorfin, from Bethune in northern France, was arrested last September when customs officials at Lombok's airport discovered methamphetamine worth £179,000 and 22 ecstasy pills in his suitcase.
During his trial, Dorfin said someone had asked him to carry the suitcase and he did not know it contained drugs.
He was sentenced to death in May, but a higher court later commuted his sentence to 19 years in prison.
He is to be transferred to a maximum security jail and will be held in solitary confinement until then, Mr Sambudji said.
More than 150 people are currently on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug crimes. About a third of them are from overseas.