Irish drug traffickers escape LatinAmerican jail

Convicted drug mules Dermot, 21, and Leigh O’Neill, 25, from Athlone had both been sentenced to 11 years in jail in Venezuela last August.
Fr John Jennings in Caracas, who had been visiting the two men, said he got a call from them after the brothers fled the notorious San Juan de Los Morros slammer outside Caracas. “They usually rang me looking for money, but this time they told me they’d escaped, I was surprised to say the least.”
The O’Neill brothers had been travelling with fellow Irishman Martin Beirne in March last year. Beirne, 28, died in a Caracas hotel when cocaine-filled balloons burst in his stomach. The brothers fled the scene but were later arrested. In police custody, Leigh O’Neill later passed 92 balloons filled with 725 grams of cocaine with a street value of some €50,000. No drugs were found on the person of Dermot, who had always protested his innocence.
After fleeing prison early last month, the O’Neill brothers made their way overland to neighbouring Colombia to the border town of Cucuta, then on to Bogota.
The Venezuelan Ministry of Communications did not respond when asked if the two men had escaped.
http://www.thesun.ie/irishsol/homepage/news/5074019/They-just-walked-out-in-the-middle-of-the-day-and-went-to-the-local-bus-stop-It-came-as-a-surprise.html