Two Owerri Custodial Centre inmates, who escaped have been arrested for alleged involvement in a fresh case of kidnapping and armed robbery.

Okechukwu Edison (42), and Sunday Morison were arrested by the Nigeria Police Force's Intelligence Response Team, (IRT) under DCP Tunji Disu.

According to The Nation the suspects are accused of having coordinated and participated in the kidnapping of a female lawyer from Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital.

They were awaiting trial along with two other criminal gang members involved in the kidnapping for over 11 years before they escaped during the jailbreak on April 5, 2022.

Both suspects were originally from Rumuji, Rivers State's Emohua Local. They were both arrested for long-term kidnapping, armed burglary, and car snatching years ago.

After successfully coordinating the kidnapping of a female legal practitioner in the city, the suspects were apprehended by Crack detectives of the Force Intelligence Bureau Intelligence Response Team FIB-IRT on November 10, 2022, at Rumuola junction in the Rivers State capital.

"We left the correctional facility on Monday, April 5, 2022, during the attack on the prison by a group of unknown gunmen who threw dynamites at the walls of the prison and commanded inmates to flee," one of the suspects confessed.

"We went into kidnapping, robbery, and car theft after some armed soldiers invaded and destroyed the oil bunkering site we were making a living from after the jailbreak freedom as we lost everything that was sustaining our family," he continued.

They were apprehended after IRT agents received information about the kidnapping of the female lawyer who had been held captive for three days.

Police authorities directed their operatives to conduct an immediate search and rescue of the lawyer.

The lawyer was released after the suspected criminals were apprehended, and she identified two of the suspects in the police net as the people who kidnapped her and stole N5 million from her bank account.

Recounting his prison experience, the gang leader Edison Okechukwu stated that he was imprisoned because he loaned a car to a roommate named Emmanuel, who was later arrested and charged with kidnapping.

He also stated that he had spent eleven years as an awaiting trial inmate in the Imo State prison prior to the jailbreak and that the attackers of the prison invaded the facility and ordered inmates to leave.

On kidnapping, he stated that they spotted the victim along Igwuruta road coming out of a shop in the city and kidnapped her, then called one Chukwuemeka Onu 25 male from his village to arrange for the safekeeping of their victim in an unfinished building.

According to Onu's confession, he took Okechukwu, the gang leader, to Eneke, a semi-urban settlement in the city, to make arrangements for where to keep his bunkering equipment, not realizing he was accompanied by a kidnapped woman.

One of the suspects also admitted that he was imprisoned in the Imo State prison prior to the jailbreak and had spent 14 years there before his case of armed robbery was reassigned to a new judge.

The IRT team is still looking into their involvement in other criminal activities in the state and making efforts to apprehend other gang members.