Prison Escapes

The Afghan government announced Thursday that it had fired three senior police officials in the southern province of Kandahar, two weeks after the Taliban staged a spectacular prison break that freed hundreds of militants. Insurgents freed in the June 13 assault on Kandahar's main jail quickly joined ranks with local Taliban fighters and briefly overran part of a strategic district close to the city.

A former Iraqi Cabinet minister on Monday defended his escape from a Baghdad prison and said he planned to return to his home in the U.S. Ayham Sameraei, a former electricity minister with U.S. and Iraqi citizenship, was serving time for corruption when he escaped in December. The charges concerned an estimated $2 billion in missing funds for contracts to rebuild Iraq's electrical infrastructure. Sameraei said he fled because he feared being killed or kidnapped.

A former Iraqi Cabinet minister was home in suburban Chicago, a month after escaping from a Baghdad prison where he was serving time on corruption charges. Ayham Samaraie, the former minister of electricity, arrived at O'Hare International Airport aboard a flight from Jordan. He has both U.S. and Iraqi citizenship.

An escaped prisoner who evaded a manhunt by stealing three vehicles, including singer Crystal Gayle's tour bus, has been arrested, Daytona Beach police said. Christopher Daniel Gay, 32, escaped from a prisoner transport van Jan. 21 near Hardeeville, S.C. Authorities have said his motive for fleeing was to see his terminally ill mother. He is suspected of stealing a pickup in South Carolina, and then the cab of a tractor-trailer in Georgia.

A convicted triple murderer escaped from the Kentucky State Reformatory but was quickly caught, corrections officials said. Michael Wayne Brunner, 46, was found in a field near Interstate 42 about three miles west of the prison, Kentucky State Police spokesman Chip Perry said. He said Brunner was unarmed and wearing prison-issue khaki pants, a T-shirt, cap and tennis shoes.

Authorities asked for the public's help Wednesday in their search for four youths who made a violent escape Sunday from a juvenile detention camp in Orange County's Cleveland National Forest. The boys allegedly fought their way out of the low-security Los Pinos Conservation Camp shortly before midnight. When a Probation Department deputy tried to stop them, one of the boys struck him with a heavy metal pipe, sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino said.

One of the four youths who escaped from an Orange County juvenile detention camp in the Cleveland National Forest has been arrested, authorities said Friday. Anthony Soto, 17, escaped with three 16-year-olds Sunday from the Los Pinos Conservation Camp, said sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino. Soto was taken into custody Thursday in Anaheim after a foot chase by Anaheim police and county probation officers. The other teens remain at large, Amormino said.

An inmate serving a sentence for receiving stolen property escaped from an Orange County jail Sunday by slipping through an open gate at the facility's loading dock, authorities said. David Olmedo, 22, fled from the Central Men's Jail downtown when a truck made a delivery to the facility, Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said. Olmedo, who was due to be released in June, was serving less than a year in jail.

A Yemeni American who was on the FBI's list of 26 most wanted terrorism suspects has surrendered after tunneling out of a Yemeni prison with other convicted Al Qaeda members last year, authorities said. Jaber Elbaneh, 40, and another escapee turned themselves in recently, said Interior Minister Rashid Alimi. Elbaneh, a U.S. citizen of Yemeni origin, is wanted on a 2002 charge of providing material support to a terrorist organization -- a suspected Al Qaeda cell based in Lackawanna, N.Y.

huntsville, texas -- Two inmates working in a prison garden wrested guns from two guards Monday, exchanged gunfire with other officers and stole a pickup truck, running over and killing one of the guards trying to stop them, prison officials said. One inmate was captured within an hour, soon after the pair committed a carjacking, police say. The other was caught a few hours later, after a manhunt that included a police helicopter, bloodhounds and law enforcers on horseback.