Murder blade smuggled into Pentonville prison was likely to have been flown in by drone
The weapon is a manufactured hunting style knife 'not a knife that has been made inside a prison - a so called shank'
A LARGE hunting knife smuggled into Pentonville prison and used to stab one inmate to death and critically wound two more, may have been smuggled in by drone.
Victim Jamal Mahmoud, 21, was stabbed to death and thrown over the railing of a fifth-floor landing, protected by netting, in Tuesday afternoon's knife horror. Two more cons, who have not been named, were stabbed and taken to hospital with knife wounds.
A source said that the four inch weapon found at the murder scene "Is not a knife that has been made inside a prison - a so-called shank.
"The conclusion is that is has been thrown over the wall or brought in by a drone.
"These types of weapons can cause carnage in a prison environment."
The Sun's revelations come as the Prison Governors Association yesterday blasted safety in British jails following the multiple attack.
Governors warned of an "unprecedented" rise in prison violence and suicides and called for a public inquiry into safety behind bars.
A PGA spokesman said : "Our members, uniformed staff and prisoners are working and living in squalid and brutal conditions which should not be tolerated in a country that is one of the richest in the Western world.
"If a society is judged by how it treats those it locks up, then we are in a very dark place."
Pentonville was on 'lock down' yesterday as guards searched for more weapons and police carried out a forensic examination of the scene.
Murder victim Mahmoud, of Somali descent and who had just become a father, was jailed for six years and six months in July after hiding a loaded Skorpion machine gun and ammunition in a garden in Enfield, North London.
He was already serving five-and-a-half years in prison recently imposed for robbery.
His sister Souzan, told ITV News the murder was "just devastating.”
She added : “I blame the prison more than the actual person that done it. They owed him a duty of care and they just neglected him.”
Souzan added of her mum : “She’s worried about my other brother, who is also in prison.”
Two prisoners, a 34-year-old man and a 26-year-old man, were arrested on suspicion of murder and are being quizzed at a North London police station.
Category B Pentonville holds more than 1,200 adult men. An inspection report on the Victorian jail published last year said: “Most prisoners felt unsafe, levels of violence were much higher than in similar prisons and had almost doubled since the last inspection.”
The Prison Officer Association said “the unprecedented rise in violence in all of our prisons must not be underestimated.”
They backed calls for an inquiry into safety and said : “There have been a significant number of suspicious deaths in prisons, which the police have being investigating over the last 18 months.
"We now ask for the Ministry of Justice to fully investigate this matter and the underlying problems.”
Frances Crook, Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “Sadly, this latest fatal incident in our prisons should come as no surprise, given the crisis in safety behind bars which has mounted in recent years.
“Assaults in prison have increased by more than 30 per cent in the space of a year alone. Suicides are at a 10-year high and there were more alleged prison homicides in 2015 than in any other year on record.
“A toxic cocktail of prison overcrowding and under-resourcing means that prisons like Pentonville are increasingly losing any semblance of control on what goes on behind bars.
“How much longer before this national emergency is recognised for what it is and radical action is taken to reduce the number of people being exposed to lawlessness and violence?”
In May, a drone was 'disabled' whilst flying over the jail after being spotted by an officer's torch.
Staff also recovered the wreckage of another drone that had been thrown into a jail bin.
And on 14 August two drones were seized in one day. One crashed and the other was seized mid-flight.