now next on the program i want to turn
to what's been one of the most read
stories on the bbc news website all
today
the danish submarine builder who
murdered the journalist
on his ball on board his homemade sub
has been caught
trying to escape from prison peter
madsen is serving a life sentence at a
prison
close to copenhagen he initially made
his escape by threatening a prison
employee
and then jumped into a van and forced
the driver to go through the prison
gates
this was the moment that police caught
up with him you can see him
wearing black lying in a bush on the
left of the screen with an armed officer
just in front of him
his trial i'm sure you remember back in
2017 received a huge amount of global
attention
during the trial he denied killing the
swedish reporter kim val
but he was found guilty of her murder
well the police have given us more
information today on the circumstances
of his capture
so he was at large for a relatively
short time before we got him
in connection with the arrest he throws
something away that we thought
looked like a pistol-like object we will
investigate it
but we don't think that it's a gun at
the same time when he was arrested in
handcuffed
they found that he was wearing a belt
that looked like a bomb belt
i want to speak to adrian murray a
journalist based in copenhagen um adrian
it's an extraordinary story
uh do we have any more details on how a
convicted murderer was
able to escape well high drama
indeed a local police revealed that he
managed to escape from a prison
on the outskirts of west copenhagen
shortly after 10 this morning now
it is understood that he had threatened
a prison employee with a pistol-like
object before managing to flee
but the prison staff actually followed
him outside of the jail
um they notified the police at about 10
20 and he was apprehended within minutes
uh it's understood he tried to get into
a white van to avoid
escape however there's no suspicion of
anyone else involved now
when they did arrest him they handcuffed
him and as you say they discovered there
was a
suspicious belt that he was wearing so
at that point
um the police actually stood back and
they called in reinforcement so as
you've seen in the video there were
police officers on police officers um
observing mr madsen as he sat on the
grass for some time
now the bomb squad came and they
actually sent in a robot
they decided there was no threat and
then he was taken into custody
and i was mentioning that during his
trial he denied the murder of kim val
has he since admitted responsibility
well for some time he has uh denied
her murder his story changed numerous
times and of course he was
convicted last month however
a documentary aired on danish television
a journalist here had spent
uh some time talking to him uh in
telephone conversations there were some
20 hours worth of phone conversations
and
apparently it's reported that during
that he was asked did he kill her and he
answered yes so that was a big shift
from his previous stance where he's
always maintained that he was not
responsible for her death
and what's the reaction being to the
fact that he's been able to escape
albeit
for a short period of time well i think
there's astonishment i mean there's
definitely a lot of
questions that are going to be asked
about how
a murderer somebody who had committed
such a severe
crime could have escaped from a facility
uh apparently he was kept in isolation
but uh
there are some local press reports that
he may have had access to a workshop
and potentially some tools uh of course
uh
he he was committed he was um convicted
of a serious serious murder
he was serving a life sentence and
simply uh people convicted that such
crimes should not be able to
escape from a prison facility uh the
justice minister has said that it's
likely to be investigated
and obviously there's going to be some
very serious questions for the prison
authorities of how
this could have happened
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you