When our plan to escape from the courthouse didn’t work, we studied every other possibility. As I have mentioned, there had been a previous escape attempt from Sharjah Central Prison prior to my arrival. A group of inmates had tried to dig through the wall of their cell; and this became a common proposal.
We discussed the possibility of digging through the floor, and tunneling out from under the prison; it was suggested that the toilets could potentially be pulled out, and we could, again, tunnel our way out from there. I never liked these ideas; they would take too much time, the likelihood of detection was too high, and digging a tunnel just seemed farfetched to me. Aside from these logistical reasons, I suppose, such an approach conflicted with my nature. Escaping from prison is the ultimate act of defiance, I wanted to go out the front door and I saw no reason why we couldn’t.
If timed properly, I was sure we could physically confront or successfully evade the police at least enough to get out of the main building; from there it would just be a matter of getting over the perimeter wall, and there were a few options available by which we could do that.
We finally determined that this would be the best way, and so we focused our training in the courtyard on sprinting, jumping and dynamic upper body strength. In the meantime, Khalid tried to organize support for us outside; a car and transport out of the country; through friends of his whom he knew from the Tamil Tigers.
Despite the popular and ludicrous rumors, you see, I had no CIA or FBI or Mossad contacts to facilitate our escape.
Here I would like to say something. If you cannot help a prisoner, don’t promise to do so. Over the course of my imprisonment so many people made promises to help me in one way or another, but almost no one actually kept their word. Aside from the disappointment and frustration this causes, more importantly, it wastes a massive amount of time and cripples a prisoner’s ability to plan properly.
We spent long periods of time waiting for people to fulfill their promises, only to be ultimately told that the help would not actually come. If people had been frank from the beginning, we could have planned accordingly, and acted sooner.
The help Khalid was trying to arrange never worked out, and this forced us to recruit other prisoners for the escape plan who had reliable contacts outside. However, when more people know about a secret, the less likely it is to remain a secret.
#دروس_المعتقل
#Prison_Lessons