MANHUNT IN FRANCE

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31520, 7 November 1967, Page 17

MANHUNT IN FRANCE

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter—Copyright) LA ROCHELLE (France), Nov. 6. A manhunt was launched throughout France this weekend for a 31-year-old O.A.S. (Secret Army Organisation) killer who got away from a grim 17th century island gaol hidden, it is believed, in a trunk.

The wanted man is Claude Tenne, a former paratrooper serving a life term for murdering a French policeman in Algiers six years ago. He is thought to be the first man to get away from the gaol on the He de Re, one and a half miles off the mainland near La Rochelle, for cen-

turies considered escapeproof. Tenne, it is believed, got away inside the luggage of three fellow convicts—all former O.A.S. men like himself—who were released on Friday night. If he was hiding in one of the trunks shipped to the mainland, then he had about 18 hours start on the police before the alarm was raised. He is now believed to be well away from the district. Tenne was not missed until early Saturday afternoon, partly because of a protest demonstration by convicts in the gaol over food served in the prison. They refused to return to their cells on Friday night and this made it difficult to have a roll ca'l to see if anyone was missing. The three men released on Friday night included Lazio Varga, gaoled for 10 years for

his part in an assassination attempt on President de Gaulle near Paris in 1963. Police were ordered to pick up the three men after Tenne’s escape was discovered and Varga was arrested this afternoon in the Paris area. A condition of his release was that he should not move from the Bordeaux area of south-western France. Although no-one is credited with having escaped before from the island gaol itself. Marc Robin, a notorious O.A.S. leader, got away in 1964 after being taken from the gaol to hospital in La Rochelle for medical treatment. Robin, who knows the district around La Rochelle well, has never been caught. The director of the maximum-security prison and three of his staff have been suspended and the State Prosecutor and a judge have arrived there to investigate.