Moroccan Belgian Nordin Benallal was arrested in Ceuta while participating in the kidnapping of a person. He is considered an escape master. He has already escaped Belgian chains five times, one of which involved a helicopter. In terms of the best fiction, remembering the series “Prison Break”
Nordin Benallal, 41, a Belgian of Moroccan origin, is known as “the king of escapes” for the countless times he has escaped from Belgian prisons in five years – five times – and also for the various tricks he used to escape.
The schema master was now arrested in Ceuta when he was involved in the kidnapping of a person, says the Spanish newspaper El Mundo in today’s edition. It remains to be seen how long he will be incarcerated or when the next escape will be…
In one of his evasions he got out of jail in a prison van, disguised with a wig and sunglasses. He took advantage of a visit from his brother to change clothes with him and go out as if it were nothing. Another time, he feigned an ankle injury during a transfer between courts and then threw his crutches out and started running. Another scheme was to go around the prison wall thanks to the rope that was thrown from the outside to help escape. And the most spectacular, the one that guaranteed media coverage all over the world, was the one where he managed to get out of prison by helicopter. This elevated him to the status of the protagonists of the film The Great Escape or the series Prison Break, says the article from El Mundo.
This historic escape took place on October 28, 2007 and was very cinematic. Benallal – convicted of dozens of assaults, all very violent, whit shots and wounded – was then in Ittre prison, 10 kilometers from Brussels. He was transferred there from the Andenne jail after being surprised by guards planning a new escape.
At 6 pm on that 28th of October, four of his accomplices, dressed as policemen and wearing bulletproof vests, entered a helicopter factory, and took a device, having kidnapped a pilot. One followed with the pilot to force him to fly to Ittre prison and land in the jail yard. But nothing went according to the plan. Benallal managed to get on the helicopter but other prisoners wanted to take the opportunity to escape as well and grabbed the skids of the device when it took off. The helicopter crashed, the propeller came loose and hit one of the inmates. Taking advantage of the confusion installed and the opening of the main gate to evacuate the wounded, Benallal stole a gun and managed to get out. Plan B was already waiting for him outside: the Volkswagen Golf in which he fled to Holland. Months later he would be arrested in that country, after committing an assault in The Hague. Convicted and extradited to Belgium in 2010, the last time he made news in the Belgian press was in August 2018, when he was released with an electronic bracelet.
