FEATURES Maze prison held the trump card, but I.R.A. gunmen won the trick

Press, 13 October 1983, Page 21

FEATURES

Maze prison held the trump card, but I.R.A. gunmen won the trick

Northern Ireland police and troops see it as a humiliating defeat. The Irish Republican Army call it “one in the eye for Britain.” Right-wing Tories want the Minister in charge of Northern Ireland affairs to resign. SHYAM BHATIA and MARTIN BAILEY, of the London “Observer,” report from Belfast on the affair that has caused such strong reactions — the mass break-out from Maze prison that has still left 19 I.R.A. gunmen on the run

The dark blue prison tea lorry had already passed two checkpoints unchallenged. At the third, the driver stopped, handed over his prison pass, and waited for a guard to hand him a playing card in return. Without it, he would not be allowed to leave the Maze prison complex.

On the day of the mass break-out the card was the two of spades. The driver never got it, for the guards were suspicious: tea lorries are not meant to leave the Maze.

It was this elementary card exchange system which finally, but too late, alerted the prison authorities to the fact that the worst breach of security in Britain’s penal history was under way. As a result, one prison officer was killed, 19 I.R.A. men have regained their liberty, and the Northern Ireland Office under Mr James Prior has suffered a humiliating defeat.

A week later the Maze still looked like a N.A.T.O. base on full alert, with soldiers dressed in battlefield green guarding every point of access. They had, of course, arrived too late.

When the 38 prisoners escaped from the supposedly high-security complex, they found their way out almost unbelievably easy. Our investigations have established that:

• There is no closed-circuit television system in the prison’s “H” blocks; • Metal detectors, although available, are virtually never used;

• The prison’s security arrangements assume that no prisoner would ever have access to a gun; • The escaping prisoners successfully negotiated at least two inner gates without any challenge. At least five of the prisoners who piled into the tea lorry were armed with small hand guns. If metal detectors installed at the prison entrance had been used, those weapons would almost certainly have been detected. Body frisking, which should have compensated, was nominal.

New security measures have now transformed the appearance of the Maze, which until the break-out had been regarded as one of Europe’s most secure prisons. After the break-out British troops appeared over-night to guard the complex, and members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary are still scouring the country for escaped

I.R.A. men, some of them convicted murderers.

The I.R.A. regards the mass escape as “one in the eye for Britain.” A Sinn Fein spokesman in Belfast, where jubilant Republicans have been celebrating, said: “We have breached the walls of Britain’s Stalag.” The mixture of security incompetence, daring, and sheer luck that made possible the jailbreak exploded when inmates in H Block 7 began to implement an escape plan painstakingly devised weeks before by leaders of their escape committees.

Republican sources have told “The Observer” that the prisoners, who like to regard themselves as prisoners of war, had an “escape committee” working in each wing of their block. Secret communications between the wings, which in theory are impossible, enabled the

men to co-ordinate their actions so that there was no confusion on EDay — escape day. Our inquiries have revealed that the escape was possible only because of major security lapses. The crucial element was the smuggling of guns into the Maze. Five were found discarded after the escape and it is highly likely that some of the 19 prisoners still on the run were armed with smuggled weapons. The Government has denied that metal detection equipment had been faulty or had been tampered with. But we have discovered that metal detectors are not normally used on people entering the Maze.

Father Denis Faul, a Catholic priest who regularly says Mass at the prison, said that the use of metal detectors was stopped two years ago. This has been confirmed

by other visitors who use the main entrance. Mr Alistair Black, a Unionist who has visited the Maze on more than 100 occasions, said manual frisking was cursory for such a high security prison. The escaping I.R.A. men were armed with tiny .25 calibre “ladies handbag” American guns, which are only four inches long. They could have been broken down into smaller sections for smuggling; more disturbing, it is possible that all the guns were taken in one single consignment to H-Block 7 with the connivance of prison officers. Once the guns were inside, the elaborate H-Block security system immediately became vulnerable. All the security arrangements are made on the assumption that noone could threaten a warder with a gun. But just before 3 p.m. on EDay the supposedly impossible hap-

pened. Top I.R.A. man Brendan McFarlane over-powered the principal officer guarding Block 7. Split second action by half-a-dozen armed prisoners immobilised guards in the four wings of the block.

The officer guarding the central control unit was shot twice in the head, and another warder was forced at gunpoint to man the telephone in case of any calls or inquiries.

Incredibly, not a single alarm sounded. For the next hour, Block 7 was occupied by the I.R.A.

The takeover of the block revealed a major security weakness that could easily have been remedied. There is no closedcircuit television monitoring of the control centre in an H-block. The area, known as the “Circle,” is situated in the crossbar of each block. A simple monitoring system, of the type used to prevent shoplifting, would have alerted officers outside that the block had been seized by its inmates. Soon after taking over their block the prisoners proceeded to the second stage of their plan. One took a broom and started sweeping the yard outside until he reached the double gates that allow access to the block. He asked the guard on duty if he could sweep the area beteen the gates and then pulled out a gun. The guard was marched into Block 7, where he was stripped and bound.

A prisoner dressed as a guard was now on duty at the gates. It was a simple matter to wait for the arrival of the 3.30 lorry —

carrying tea for the prisoners — which was promptly hijacked and driven into the block compound. Thirty-seven prisoners climbed into the back of the lorry. One got into the cab, laid on the floor, and pushed his gun against the driver’s groin. The hapless driver was ordered to carry on as if nothing had happened and the meal lorry successfully negotiated a series of sophisticated gates leading to the main exit of the prison. The lorry now had two more exits to negotiate. One was a simple pair of gates set in a concrete wall. The lorry was again waved through, although again it should have been searched. The

next set of gates, only a few hundred yards from the final exit, are set in a thicker 25ft concrete wall — the inner wall — that surrounds the entire prison complex.

This is where the trouble began, probably because of the card exchange system that operates for all leaving the Maze. The driver of the lorry would have been required to hand in his prison pass for an ordinary playing card that would in turn be given to the guards at the final exit on Half Town Road. “One day it might be the four of clubs, another day the ace of hearts,” a recent visitor explained. Without the right card, no one is allowed to leave the prison complex.

For some reason, possibly because the lorry-driver’s own exit pass was not in order — after all, the lorry rarely left the prison — some guards became suspicious. One of them, Mr James Ferris, who later died of stab wounds, tried to block the lorry by driving his own car in front.

The lucky streak that had helped the prisoners so remarkably was beginning to run out. It was just before 4 p.m. as the 38 men, some in warders’ uniforms, climbed out of the lorry to attack Mr Ferris and the nine other warders who were standing at the gate. All hell broke loose.

It was at this point that one prisoner was wounded when a soldier from a watchtower, who saw the fighting below, opened fire. He fired only one shot because it was almost impossible to distinguish between prisoners and warders in the crowd below. The warders managed to arrest 10 men on the spot, including one who hijacked a car and tried to batter his way out. But 28 others ran out of the gate, and made for a barbed wire fence that separates the prison from Bog Road.

The first four to negotiate the fence made for the Lagan River where they were caught and later brought back, dressed only in their underpants. Another two drove off in a privately-owned Renault

parked near the fence. They were arrested near Newcastle, County Down. Three others were arrested within a few hours of escaping. One was chased on foot by a soldier until he gave himself up; another was found hiding in the barn of a local farmer, Mr Jack Skelton, who lives at the bottom of Demiville Avenue. A third walked up to the house of a local taxi-driver, in Coronation Gardens, and asked if he could be taken to the town of Lisburn less than five miles away. Mr Danny Cargo, who runs his green Volvo as a taxi for families living near the Maze, thought he was talking to a prison warder. “He was very polite and asked me for a cigarette. He told me he’d forgotten his jacket and left his wallet behind in the prison.” Mr Cargo’s taxi was stopped at a police checkpoint, less than half-a-mile away, where the true identity of his passenger was discovered. Local families, living near the Maze, have been highly critical of the way the search for the escaped prisoners was carried out.

“We never heard any warning sirens,” said Mrs Elizabeth Simpson, whose home on Half Town Road is only a few hundred yards from the prison. “My daughter saw a man in the fields behind, but she thought he was a warder.”

Mr Skelton, the farmer whose barn provided a shelter for one fugitive, said it was he who telephoned the police to come and search his premises. There was no organised search. The main body of escaped prisoners, 19 in all, crossed the fence and made for a corner house belonging to a local engineer, Mr Ronald Dickson. The Dicksons, Ronald and Audrey, were watching television when a group of men thought to number about six, forced their way through the kitchen into their living room.

They demanded the couple’s car keys, and Mr Dickson, who was half dozing on the sofa, handed over the keys to a green Mercedes 230, a blue Mercedes van, and a blue Avenger car belonging to his son Raymond. All three have been recovered and returned, but the fugitives are still at large. Still missing is a car that was taken from nearby Campbell Close.

Lesley Ann Wilson was talking to her boy friend in his red Sunbeam when a man driving the Dicksons’ Mercedes drew up, got out, and said: “Give me the keys.” He drove off in the Sunbeam followed by nine other friends who were packed into the Mercedes. Although propaganda objectives were clearly served by the breakout, it is equally evident that the I.R.A. hoped to spring specific prisoners from the Maze. Men like “Big” Brendan McFarlane, who fired the first shot, and West Belfast bomber Bobby Storey, who was later captured, were important figures in the I.R.A. planning group that has been badly hit by recent disclosures of police supergrasses. The escape of men like McFarlane, described by police as a ruthless terrorist, is unlikely to make any immediate difference to I.R.A. strategy. Police say he is too well known bn both sides of the border and his freedom of movement will be severely restricted. They do not believe there is any immediate danger of a new campaign of violence in Northern Ireland, but in the longer term those prisoners who manage to elude the police could play a key role in rebuilding I.R.A. strategy. It is this longer term prospect, quite apart from the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, that has strengthened demands for the resignation of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Mr James Prior, and his junior Minister, Mr Nicholas Scott.

Another target for public anger is the prison governor, who is not named for security reasons. He is directly responsible for H-Block security. The present governor was appointed only 18 months ago. The inquiry now being carried out by Sir James Hennessy, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, is expected to examine the wider issue of how far security should be reorganised in the aftermath of the escapes.

Extra security is already evident, but one influential voice has already warned of the danger of over-reaction. Dr John Bach, a criminology lecturer and deputy chairman of the Maze board of visitors, said security was vital but H-Block prisoners should be treated with reasonable dignity. He said he was concerned that new security demands could make life intolerable in what is already — despite everything — Britain’s toughest prison.