Seven immigration detainees plead guilty after escape

Sev­en de­tainees who es­caped from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre have plead­ed guilty to the of­fence of es­cap­ing law­ful cus­tody and have been sen­tenced to terms of hard labour.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease, four of the de­tainees ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Singh-Phillip at the High Court, North A, on Fri­day, Ju­ly 24, where they ad­mit­ted to the of­fence.

The four men were sen­tenced to terms of hard labour rang­ing from nine months to 15 months.

Three oth­er de­tainees ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Dal­rym­ple Watts at the High Court, North A, on Tues­day, Ju­ly 28. They al­so plead­ed guilty to es­cap­ing law­ful cus­tody.

They were sen­tenced to terms of hard labour rang­ing from one to two months.

The re­lease did not state why there was a dif­fer­ence in the sen­tences im­posed on the two groups of de­tainees.

All sev­en men were sched­uled to re­turn to the High Court on Wednes­day, Ju­ly 29, to an­swer two charges of as­sault­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer.

The de­tainees are ac­cused of es­cap­ing from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre, where for­eign na­tion­als are housed while their im­mi­gra­tion mat­ters are be­ing processed.

The guilty pleas bring an ear­ly res­o­lu­tion to the es­cape charges. How­ev­er, the de­tainees still face the pend­ing as­sault charges, which are ex­pect­ed to be ad­dressed dur­ing their court ap­pear­ance.

No fur­ther de­tails were pro­vid­ed on the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the es­cape or the al­leged as­saults, and the iden­ti­ties or na­tion­al­i­ties of the de­tainees were not dis­closed in the re­lease.

The Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre has been the sub­ject of height­ened at­ten­tion fol­low­ing the es­cape, with the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings now con­tin­u­ing be­fore the High Court.