A video first published by KAN on Tuesday evening shows the events leading up to the 2021 Gilboa prison escape, which saw six terrorist prisoners escape from the prison.

The video, taken from a camera overlooking the cellblock where the escaped prisoners were held, shows the guard who was on duty that night going after the proscribed routine in a sloppy and unattentive manner.

According to the routine, during the night a guard is supposed to enter the cell block every half hour and with the help of a flashlight, look through portholes in the doors to make sure the prisoners are there. In the video, the guard can be seen not looking into the cells properly, and on some occasions, she even skipped over some cells - one of them being cell number five, from where the prisoners later escaped.

After barely a minute, the guard reported "all clear." She then wrote in the report book: "I carried out a visit in the block, in the cells 1-15, with a special focus on the prisoners with a heightened flight risk in cells 4, 5 and 14." The prisoners escaped shortly after through cell number 5.

View of the Israeli Prison Authorities, Gilboa Prison (credit: MOSHE SHAI/FLASH90)
View of the Israeli Prison Authorities, Gilboa Prison (credit: MOSHE SHAI/FLASH90)

Superficial routines in Gilboa Prison

"Most of the routines were carried out superficially and inefficiently, with a focus on checking off assignments. This happened in Gilboa and other places, the same with regard to searches, infrastructure and supervision during the night," the chairman of the Gilboa Prison Investigation Committee, Menachem Finkelstein said of the security routines in the prison.

The first prisoner entered the tunnel, which was dug from the shower of cell number 5, between 00:30 and 01:00 a.m. The guard making the rounds at 01:00 a.m. should have detected this immediately but didn't. The last prisoner was through the tunnel at 01:37.

During the interrogation by the police, the last prisoner said of the guards that "they just passed through the corridor, but they didn't check [the cells]."

One of the guards did not just recognize that prisoners were missing but did not see that cell number 5 held prisoners who weren't supposed to be there. 

The investigation of the prison break

In the investigation, she denied that she conducted a negligent examination: "Every half hour I passed by with a flashlight and looked at the beds through the porthole. Everything was in order. When you see a blanket, you see that there is a person underneath by the way the blanket looks."

Only almost two hours later, at 03:17 a.m., cell number 5 was opened. "This is criminal negligence in my eyes," said commissioner Katy Perry in her testimony in front of the inspection committee.

After the escape in September 2021, an investigation discovered that hundreds of beds in various prisons throughout the country were not visible at all through the porthole.

The six escaped Palestinian terrorists dug a tunnel for over a year with the help of other prisoners. After the escape, they were only recaptured after a 13-day manhunt.

The escapees included Zakaria Zubeidi, an al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commander responsible for many terrorist attacks and deaths of Israelis. The other escapees – Munadil Nafayat, Iham Kahamji, Yaquob Qadiri and brothers Mahmoud and Mohammed al-Arida – were members of Islamic Jihad.

The prisoners were punished with five years in prison in addition to their existing sentences.

Michael Starr contributed to this story.