Rights Group Blames Overcrowding, Case Backlogs for Kakata Jailbreak

More than 100 inmates escaped from Kakata Central Prison in Margibi County on the night of Sunday, September 20, 2026, after prisoners held in Block "A" broke through a section of the facility's wall and scaled its barbed-wire perimeter. The Ministry of Justice confirmed the breach but said the Bureau of Corrections and Rehabilitation was still working to verify the exact number and identities of those who got out.

Kakata Central Prison was built to hold 60 inmates but was housing more than 200 sentenced prisoners and pretrial detainees at the time of the escape, according to the Ministry and civil society reporting. Joint security forces, including the Liberia National Police and Armed Forces of Liberia personnel, launched a manhunt across Kakata and surrounding communities, and the public was warned against harboring escapees or attempting to apprehend them directly.

Among those who escaped and were quickly recaptured was Tony Obina, a Nigerian national recently convicted alongside two Liberia Drug Enforcement Agency officers in a drug trafficking case involving roughly US$181,000 and more than L$63 million. Local residents reportedly found Obina and returned him to custody within days of the breach. It was the second mass escape at the facility in two years, after 47 inmates fled in September 2024.

On September 25, the rule-of-law civil society organization Sawabenu issued a statement attributing the jailbreak to prison overcrowding, prolonged pretrial detention, inadequate funding and weaknesses in judicial case management, noting that more than 72 percent of those held at Kakata were pretrial detainees rather than convicted prisoners. The group proposed seven reforms, including a full investigation into the security breach, a nationwide review of pretrial detention cases, restoration of fast-track court proceedings, expansion of the Public Defense Program and increased funding for the correctional system.

As of this writing, authorities have not published a final count of how many escapees remain at large. Liberia Today will update this report as the Ministry of Justice releases further information on the manhunt and any findings from an investigation into the breach.