On the night of February 8, 2023, the police detained six foreigners in the vicinity of Balková in northern Pilsen, who had escaped from the detention facility in Balková the previous day. 13 people escaped from the premises.
Pilsen – The police are searching for the last of the 13 foreigners who escaped from the detention facility in Balková in the northern Pilsen area on Tuesday in the early evening. She said it on twitter. She secured one person this morning and five more this afternoon. The police arrested six already before midnight on Tuesday in the vicinity of Balková, foreign police spokesman Josef Urban told ČTK. Refugees, mainly from North Africa, were waiting in Balková for administrative deportation to their country of origin.
Advertisement'; }
It is not yet clear how the foreigners managed to escape. “How the whole situation happened is still under investigation, we can only say that they overcame the inner perimeter of the detention camp, which is provided by the Refugee Facility Administration of the Ministry of the Interior. No one was injured during the escape,” Urban said in the morning. The Refugee Facilities Administration did not want to comment on the manner in which the foreigners escaped from the premises.
The police from several regions, the foreign police, were searching for the escaped foreigners, and the police air service was also involved in the search.
The detention center for refugees and asylum seekers in Balková was established in 1998 in the former building of the secondary police school, which even before that served as a permanent outdoor school. It serves its purpose with breaks, only men are accommodated here. According to Urban, there are currently 62 foreigners in the facility.
Security inside the complex is ensured by a contracted security agency, Jan Piroch, spokesman for the Refugee Facility Administration, told ČTK today. According to him, the deployment of members of the security agency is adapted to the current number of placed foreigners. The current escape is the largest in recent years. “Since 2015, when we took over the facility, such a situation has not happened. In cooperation with the police, we will take steps to minimize the repetition of the situation,” said Piroch.
In the morning, the police announced a search for seven men, originally from Morocco. The youngest was 19, the oldest 45. According to current information, a nineteen-year-old man was arrested during the morning. Another five during the afternoon. Information appeared on Facebook of the town of Rabštejn nad Střelou that the police detained a four-member group of foreigners near Gamberk hill in Rabštejn.
The men were in The Balks were detained due to administrative deportation to their country of origin, not because they were suspected of criminal activity, said police spokeswoman Michaela Raindlová this morning. “Police officers ask all citizens who could provide any information about the whereabouts, appearance or movement of wanted persons to immediately report to the nearest police station of the Czech Republic or to the emergency line 158,” she added.
