French drugs suspect escapes Indonesian jail using sarong

An accused drug trafficker has busted out of an Indonesian prison by sawing through the bars and using a sarong to swing down to freedom, police said. 

A manhunt is under way for Frenchman Felix Dorfin after his daring escape from the second floor of a detention centre on Lombok island on Sunday local time.

"He escaped through the window on the second floor in the detention centre and, using a sarong and curtains which were tied together, he climbed down and then escaped," West Nusa Tenggara police spokesman I Komang Suartana told AFP.

The 35-year-old was arrested in September for allegedly carrying a false-bottomed suitcase filled with four kilograms of drugs at the airport. 

Dorfin is awaiting trial in a possible death penalty case.

Indonesia has some of the world's strictest drug laws, including death penalty sentences for some traffickers.

Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, who were ringleaders of the Bali Nine heroin smuggling gang, were executed in 2015. 

Jailbreaks are common in Indonesia. Inmates are often held in unsanitary conditions in overcrowded and understaffed prisons.

Four foreign inmates tunnelled their way out of a Bali prison in 2017.