Escaped convicts sentenced

  • 2007-04-18
  • By Talis Saule Archdeacon
RIGA - Four convicts and one accomplice who took part in a dramatic jailbreak earlier this year have been sentenced by The Riga Latgale District Court. The convicts performed their daring escape from the Latvian prison on Aug. 9, 2006, but their freedom was short-lived 's they were apprehended two days later in Lithuania.

Eriks Atkacovs, who organized the escape plan, received a sentence of an additional three years and six months in jail. His total sentence, including the sentences he had yet to serve for past transgressions, amounts to 10 years imprisonment and three years probation with confiscation of property.

Viktors Atamanovs, Aleksejs Ivanovs, and Ricarts Pravecs, who were the other three escaped convicts, each received an extra three years in prison. Atamanovs, however, had significant outstanding sentences and will have to serve a total of 13 years imprisonment with three years of probation and confiscation of property.
The law provides for a maximum of a five year sentence if the escape was connected with threats of violence to prison personnel, was a repeated escape attempt or was an escape in an organized group.
Viktors Ivanovs, the father of the convicted Aleksejs Ivanovs, was given a two year suspended sentence with a one year probationary period for his role in helping with the escape.

The court finally ruled that the prison should receive compensatory payments of 200 lats for equipment damaged in the escape. The court threw out, however, a claim filed by prison warden Vjaceslavs Fjodorovs for approximately 1,000 lats in moral compensation. The warden claimed that he was the victim of violence and deadly threats when he tried to detain the escapees. Fjodorovs will still be able to press the claim with a civil proceeding.
During the escape, the prisoners somehow managed to cut through the bars of their cell. They were then able to leave the building and jump over the fence without being caught.

Viktors Ivanovs was waiting on the other side to pick them up in his Volkswagen. He drove them to the Lithuanian border, at which point they presumably got out and illegally crossed the border by foot to meet back up with the car on the other side.
Things did not go so smoothly when they reached the Polish border, however. The escapees were detained while trying to climb over a 2.5 meter high barbed wire fence that marks the Lithuanian border with Poland.

Police assume that the convicts were trying to make their way to see relatives living in Germany.
The ease of the prisoners' escape was due in part to an underfunded penal system. A probe into the escape found that negligence by the guards, a lack of guard staff, and a lack of technology such as security cameras contributed to the escape.