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or the third time in three years, a prisoner has escaped from the Salemba Correction Facility in East Jakarta — another incident that poses serious questions about the penitentiary’s security system.

Anwar bin Kiman was sentenced on June 24 to life imprisonment and sent to the correctional facility in East Jakarta for raping and killing a 12-year-old girl in October last year. However, on Tuesday, allegedly with help from his wife, the convicted rapist-murderer broke out of prison.

Akbar Hadi, the spokesman of the Law and Human Rights Ministry’s Directorate General of Penitentiaries, said Saturday that a large number of people visiting the prisoners compared to the prison guards present played a significant role in the escape.

He said it took place on the second day of Idul Fitri, one of the days when a lot of people visit their friends and relatives at the correctional facility, when there were more than 2,000 visitors and only 50 guards on duty.

“The incident occurred at 2 p.m. There were a lot of visitors at that time and we have only 50 officers in total,” Akbar said.

Anwar escaped the prison reportedly by wearing a hijab and veil allegedly provided by his wife during the visit, thus exploiting the system in male prisons that do not normally carry out a strict examinations of female visitors. The wife has been detained for questioning while the police have detailed a team to search for Anwar.

It was not the first prison break from Salemba. After a drug convict named Asep ran away the facility in June 2014 using a counterfeit prison guard identity card that was prepared by his wife, the head of the Salemba Correction Facility at the time argued that the escape could have been prevented if police had informed him earlier that Asep had previously escaped from the Kebon Jeruk Police detention center.

The Salemba facility suffered a second prison break in April 2015 when another drug convict, named Sofyan bin Wutu, also escaped. He was rearrested five months later.

Akbar said the correctional facility has applied a strict security system involving the fingerprinting of every male visitor in the hope that any convict attempting to leave would be detected immediately. However, Anwar, who was dressed as a woman did not have his fingerprints tested.

“Because it is a male prison, we only applied the fingerprint test to male visitors for time efficiency, while the female visitors were under no obligation to take it,” he said.

Jakarta Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Awi Setiono said police officers have checked various places, including the convict’s house and the houses of his relatives, without success, but he emphasized that police would do their best to bring the man back to prison.

Incidentally, by also wearing a hijab and veil a convicted terrorist named Roqi ran away from the Jakarta Police’s detention center in 2012.

— JP/Indra Budiari