A notorious prisoner posted selfies on Facebook from a maximum security wing on Strangeways - weeks after fleeing another jail for the Costa Del Sol.

Convicted armed robber Haroon Ahmed posed for pictures taken behind bars using one of his collection of contraband miniature phones - which he hid by the lock of his cell door with an ingenious method.

In one image Ahmed and a pal can be seen posing in the yellow and blue uniforms reserved for inmates who are an escape risk, Manchester Crown Court heard.

The 27-year-old posted images on the social networking site three times over the course of nine days - the last of them depicting the view from his cell.

In a series of raids, he was found to be in possession of FOUR mobile phones, a charger and a sim card.

At the time he was on the prison’s tough Category A regime - home to prisoners who are dangerous or at risk of escaping.

Last May police launched a manhunt after Ahmed walked out of HMP Dovegate, Staffordshire, with a group of people who had been visiting him. He was later tracked down to the Costa Del Sol.

After returning to the UK from Marbella, he was moved to HMP Manchester where he taunted the authorities by posting a series of images on Facebook.

(Image: Getty)

On September 3 last year, just over a week after he posted the final picture on Facebook, Ahmed’s cell was searched by an officer, prosecutor Neil Beckwith told a Manchester Crown Court sentencing hearing.

He handed over a phone hidden in his armpit, and an improvised charger which he kept on a shelf.

The next day Ahmed’s cell was searched again, and yet another phone was found inside the door frame. It was covered in cellophane and could be accessed by pulling on an orange string torn from a prison issue blanket. The hollow frame of the door had been filled with scrunched up newspapers to prevent the device falling beyond reach.

A search of the cell next door revealed two more phones hidden in the same way - he later told officers the hiding place was in a ‘blind spot’ on the wing.

The final discovery was made when his cell was searched yet again on December 12. This time a sim card was found inside a sachet of sugar, hidden in a letter in a black bin liner.

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Ahmed later pleaded guilty to charges of possessing prohibited articles and unauthorised transmission of images from a prison. He smirked defiantly in the dock as he was jailed for two years to run alongside the time he is already serving.

The court heard that Ahmed’s criminal record stretches back to when he was 12. In 2008, he was given an indeterminate jail sentence for robbery and warned he would have to serve 30 months before parole can be considered.

Over seven years later, he still hasn’t been paroled, following involvement in assaults and the escape from Dovegate, which followed a previous escape from jail in Preston.

Andrew Evans, defending, said: “Three days after his 20th birthday Haroon Ahmed was taken from custody to Derby Crown Court and given an indeterminate sentence for the first robbery on his record, having had a career for burglary and low level violence.

“Since that date he’s remained in jail. This is a young man struggling with the indeterminate nature of his sentence. The phones were used to contact his family in Derby. Unfortunately for Mr Ahmed, the situation continues to look bleak in terms of parole.”

Sending him down, Judge David Hernandez, sentencing, said: “Offences of this nature undermine the good order of prisons, they facilitate crime being committed by those serving sentences. Deterrent sentences must be imposed.”

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