Friday 27 January 2012

Colin Duffy: ‘It’s the H-Blocks again’



Lurgan republican Colin Duffy says current conditions on Maghaberry prisons Roe House wing “could be equated to the harshness of what took place in the late 70s and early 80s” in the notorious H-Blocks.

He was speaking exclusively to the Andersonstown News just days after he was acquitted at Antrim Crown Court of the murder of British soldiers Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar at Massereene Barracks in March 2009.

Up until his acquittal and subsequent release from Maghaberry, Mr Duffy, 44, had been taking part in the no-wash protest by republicans in the jail’s Roe House wing in protest at the continued use of forced full body strip-searching by prison authorities in defiance of an agreement painstakingly worked out in August 2010.

The agreement, which was reached between the republican prisoners and prison authorities with the help of independent facilitators, was supposed to do away with full body strip-searching in the prison in favour of the BOSS chair scanner and other technology. The agreement also allowed for a gradual reduction of controlled movement for republicans within the Roe House wing.

However, the agreement was to break down after only a month when prison bosses claimed it did not cover strip-searching in the reception area of the facility and after demands from the Northern Ireland Prison Service that the humiliating practice was “essential” for security reasons.

Mr Duffy, who had been held in custody at the prison since 2009, said he was forcibly strip-searched on 76 occasions after the collapse of the Roe House agreement – an agreement which he was instrumental in bringing about as a leading negotiator for republican prisoners.

Speaking to the Andersonstown News in his Lurgan home this week, Mr Duffy described one particular full body strip-search during which guards tried to force a prison-issue jumper on him.

“It was the first strip-search that I got and I remember it quite vividly as I was going out to court,” he said.

“I took my coat off and I remember standing in the cell. They asked me if I was going to strip and I said no, I wasn’t, and that I wasn’t going to offer any resistance to them doing it. Between four and six of them then came in in full riot gear – helmets, shields, padded gear, the whole lot – and welted me against the wall straight away with the shields.

“They didn’t even try to take the top half of my clothing off, they just got the scissors out and cut it off me. They had my wrists in locks and they cut the clothes off me. They then went through the rest of the process, which was stripping me entirely naked. Afterwards they put the bottom half back on but obviously I had no top clothes on as it had just been cut off. This was quite deliberate, as it transpired, because they went and got a prison jumper for me, and we all know what the connotations are for a republican prisoner in relation to the prison uniform and what happened in the blanket, the no-wash and the hunger strike era.

“It was entirely palpable to me, the sense of elation from the people who were putting it on me. I was shouting to them to send over to the wing to get my other clothes over but they were just going ahead and forcing the prison jumper on me. I remember shouting, ‘Get this trash off my back!’ and they were smirking and smiling, as they knew fully the symbolic nature of what was taking place right there and then. They then moved me over to the reception area for me to go to court and took the cuffs off me. I immediately threw off the jumper and hurled it to the ground. I had no top on, so I put the coat on and ended up going to court like that.”

Mr Duffy said the searches are designed to break the prisoners’ will.

“They are physically hard on you straight away and drag you to the ground, put you in all sorts of headlocks, wristlocks and armlocks,” he said.

“They are deliberately inflicting as much pain as possible on you even though you’re shouting throughout, ‘I’m not resisting this, there’s no need for this’ etcetera. It didn’t matter to them, their policy was to go in hard and physically break you. Throughout the actual searches they will be whispering to you that you’re filth, you’re scum and this is all while they are inflicting all sorts of pain and you’re lying there with your genitalia on the floor. They just don’t care. Full body strip-searching is not necessary and it’s designed to humiliate and degrade people. In my opinion there isn’t any need for it.”

He reiterated claims made in the January 14 edition of the Andersonstown News by representatives of the campaign group Family and Friends of Republican Prisoners in Maghaberry that long-serving prison staff members were the main instigators of the strip-searching.

“The guards who are connected to the personal aspect of actually stripping you, some of them are screws that I would have encountered years ago and, in my opinion, the bitterness is just hanging out of them,” he said.

“They can’t disguise it and so they don’t even try to disguise it. Some of them have been there a long time and some of them are new, younger screws going about their business in the old-school way – they aren’t all of the old guard but they are of that mentality.”

Mr Duffy described the current regime in Maghaberry as similar to that at Crumlin Road Gaol at the time of the segregation protests of the early- to mid-nineties.

“I was in Crumlin Road Gaol in that period and also prior to the segregation protests which was around the time you had the bomb exploding in the jail,” he said, referring to the 1992 IRA bomb in the prison canteen that killed two loyalist prisoners.

“I moved down to the H Blocks in 1995/96 and it was relaxed enough at that stage of the game. There’s no parallel to how Maghaberry operates nowadays in comparison to the H-Blocks of that period when you had political status. But when I went back into prison in 2009, into Maghaberry, there wasn’t any continuation to the system that was in the H-Block.

“Now, in fact, you could equate that to the harshness of what took place in the H-Blocks around the time of the late-70s and early-80s, that’s the type of scenario we’re talking about there in Maghaberry.

“When you are coming from that H-Block environment down to Maghaberry now and you see the attitude of the screws and the prison administration now and how they view people who class themselves as political prisoners, you do sort of say to yourself, ‘Here, listen, what happened to all that was won in relation to achieving what was in the H-Blocks?’ They’ve obviously tried to erode it away.”

Speaking about the negotiations on the Roe House agreement in the run-up to August 2010, Mr Duffy said the key issues that the prisoners wanted addressed – strip-searching and controlled movement – were in reality not “major things”.

“We weren’t asking for big, major things and they are not big, major things to resolve,” he said.

“We were quite open to letting them [the prison authorities] phase it all in, even though some of our people wanted it all done there and then. We were reasonable. But within days of the agreement being signed there was a decision taken somewhere to start trying to claw back what had been agreed.

“Even the facilitators to this day say their interpretation of what was agreed is the prisoners’ interpretation. I remember Peter Bunting [Irish Congress of Trade Unions] saying to me, ‘That’s it, you have achieved what you set out to achieve, there will not be another republican prisoner strip-searched anywhere in this jail again.’ But the whole agreement isn’t being implemented and it didn’t even begin to be implemented because of the prison trying to renege on it.”

Mr Duffy believes that more needs to be done politically to resolve the prison issue.

“Some of these people [Sinn Féin MLAs] would have been directly involved in the blanket and no-wash, hunger strike era of the H-Block,” he said.

“As a republican, you do expect that given their more intimate knowledge of what took place then, and what has taken place in Maghaberry now, they could be putting more effort into resolving it.

“We have met delegations from Sinn Féin, the SDLP, the Justice Department, the Justice Committee, and we have impressed upon them each and every time our position in relation to what needs to be done to resolve the situation, but there’s just nothing happening.”

Mr Duffy accepted that support on the streets for the current no-wash protest was significantly lower than for similar protests in previous years. He thinks that’s due to perceptions of the prisoners involved and their affiliations to various groups.

“Obviously the public support is not comparable to the amount of street protest that went on years ago in relation to that protest,” he said.

“But that doesn’t take away from the striking similarities to what is actually taking place in the jail today.

“I don’t think you can divorce what went on in the jails years ago in relation to the criminalisation strategy the British had from the criminalisation policy that’s happening now.

“It might be subtler now, but I think it’s there and it’s behind a lot of the thinking in relation to the decision makers and the people who have the power to resolve this issue.

“It’s a case of them not wanting to accept that there are republican prisoners in jail still to this day when they want to portray the North of Ireland as a done deal.”

Mr Duffy said it was now up to the prisoners to decide if the no-wash protest should be escalated.

“No-one wants to be living in that situation long-term, so tactically they will debate and discuss amongst themselves as to what’s the best way forward,” he said.

“If they agree to bring the BOSS chair into the reception area and agree to withdraw controlled movement gradually, that’s how to resolve it. I don’t think that anyone would agree that locking people up for 23 hours a day is a regime that should be in any jail.”

The Lurgan man added that he now intended to campaign as a free man for the full implementation of the Roe House agreement.

“I’m a republican and a political activist and I don’t intend to stop being that,” he said.

“Obviously there are issues that are still there and still relevant, so I will be involved in the Family and Friends group campaign.

“I’ll be supporting them no matter what.”

"HOODED MEN" declare their support for the Bloody Sunday March.

1971 Internees
The Hooded Men were a group of internees selected by the British military in 1971 for sensory deprivation experiments so that British forces could develop their methods of psychological torture. Below we carry a statement from several of the surviving Hooded Men on the subject on the 40th anniversary Bloody Sunday march, to take place in Derry on Sunday 29th January.

Forty years ago the Stormont government banned the Civil Rights march scheduled to take place in Derry on January 30th 1972. The ban was unsuccessful, but the British Tory government followed through its counter-insurgency strategy, which began with the introduction of internment in 1971, by shooting down peaceful marchers who came out on the streets in defiance of state terror. Today, another Tory government and its middle-management in Stormont denies human and civil rights by upholding internment while also trying, by some rather desperate means, to prevent people from marching again in defence of these rights. On January 29th, we, as former Long Kesh internees, will join the march that will mark the fortieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Derry. We will march under a banner calling for an end to internment in 2012, and our numbers will include survivors of the ‘hooded treatment’, who were tortured in August 1971. We now call on every ex-internee and ex-prisoner who reads this letter join us and help carry our banner.

People are now being held without trial in the six counties at the whim of an English Secretary of State. This present-day internment is the same in all but name as that introduced in August 1971, and is the same type of repression that people marched against so bravely in January 1972. We oppose internment no matter how the British decide to implement it – whether via the ‘suspension of license’, the denial of pardons, the use of non-jury courts and the gamut of other repressive legislation at their disposal. We will march in defence of human rights, in protest against present-day internment and in opposition to the torture that continues to be practiced by the British state in Ireland and abroad. In doing so, we will salute the memory of the brave men, women and children who once marched for our freedom and who were murdered, wounded and brutalised by the British army on the streets of Derry forty years ago. We will also remember our friends who died prematurely as a result of the torture - Pat Shivers from Toomebridge, Mickey Montgomery from Derry and Seán McKenna from Newry.

The march that took place on January 30th, 1972, was a protest against internment and torture – crimes that were employed by the British state to terrorise the population of the six counties. All of the demands raised by the popular Civil Rights Movement, which the Bloody Sunday massacre was designed to destroy, remain unfulfilled. Today, the right to decent housing and jobs is denied to young people across Ireland, while the uninhibited use of stop and search powers targets not just adults but even children on their way to and from school. Along with widespread PSNI brutality during arrests, raids and other, more ‘routine’ incidences of harassment, these abuses underline the six counties’ enduring status and notoriety as a police state.

The order to commit mass murder was issued in Derry just as it was to deal with every other popular anti-colonial insurgency against British rule. These repressive policies remain central to British state strategy today: internment is still taking place in Ireland, while prisoners in Maghaberry jail are, on a daily basis, subjected to strip-search torture. These human rights abuses do not end here: through their army and intelligence agencies, the British continue to torture prisoners abroad, both in British-occupied territory and on behalf of dictator-clients like Muammar Gadaffi via practices such as ‘rendition’, abduction and outright murder.

Let no individual or political party imagine that they are the exclusive owners of the Bloody Sunday march. The people of Derry mobilised in January 1972 in a courageous, brilliant and popular protest against internment, and in defence of universal human rights. Their bravery continues to inspire people across the world, and their example will always have a truly global resonance; therefore, we believe that the fortieth anniversary Bloody Sunday march should take place, because human rights and civil rights are still being denied by the British state and its agents in Stormont.

We call on everybody who believes in these basic and universal rights to join the march and show their opposition to the continuation of repression, internment and torture, wherever it may occur. In doing so, we will all mark the fortieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday and inspire the world again by declaring that no apology from any British government will ever be acceptable while they and their allies continue to terrorise those who stand up against oppression and believe in freedom. By coming on this march, we will help build a great and enduring monument to the memory of all of those who died protesting against internment and defending all of our civil rights,

Yours Sincerely,

Michael Donnelly, Derry
Gerry McKerr, Lurgan
Patrick McNally, Armagh
Brian Turley, Armagh
Francie McGuigan, Belfast
Kevin Hannaway, Belfast
Joe Clark, Belfast
Jim Auld, Belfast

Thursday 26 January 2012

Colin Duffy Sign Replaced - Clonoe Martyrs 20th Anniversary

Local Republicans have taken down the "FREE COLIN DUFFY" sign in Derrybeg last night. This sign was erected in 2009 not long after Colin was framed by the British forces (PSNI).


The sign has now been replaced with one commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Clonoe Martyrs which takes place in a few weeks in East Tyrone.




Local republicans were contacted by the organisers, which includes the volunteers families and the East Tyrone Societies, who asked if we would help erect a number of signs highlighting the anniversary. We were only too happy to help.


Volunteer Kevin Barry O Donnell , Volunteer Patrick Vincent, Volunteer Sean O Farrell , Volunteer Peter Clancy were Killed in Action at Clonoe in 1992 , this will be marked by a Weekend of events , 16th - 18th Feb, organised by the Volunteers Families in association with the Eammon Ceannt Society Coalisland Clonoe, & the Thomas Clarke Society Dungannon.

On the 6th  February 1992  the SAS launched a deadly ambush on an Active Service Unit of the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade, killing four Volunteers – one with his hands in the air to surrender. The series of events that led to the slaughter began at 10.30pm on Sunday, 16 February 1992. Two East Tyrone ASUs positioned themselves in the centre of Coalisland to carry out a daring attack on the heavily-fortified RUC barracks in the town. 
The unit that would actually carry out the attack was armed with a Russian-made DHSK 12.7mm heavy machine gun and AKM assault rifles. The machine gun was mounted on a tripod on the floor of a flatbed truck. Daringly, the attack unit drove up to the barracks and strafed the main observation post with a sustained burst of tracer fire from the heavy machine gun. Another IRA unit provided cover. 
With the attack over, both units withdrew and headed towards the nearby Dernagh Cross before driving to the rendezvous point at St Patrick’s Church in Clonoe, where the weapons were to be checked in prior to being returned to their dumps. 
The Volunteers began stripping down the heavy machine gun. After the weapon was immobilised, the SAS, lying in wait, opened fire. 
Local people describe firing going on for at least ten minutes, with no fire returned by the Volunteers. An independent eyewitness saw one Volunteer attempting to surrender but cut down by withering SAS fire.
The backup unit, which had split into two cars and was travelling along different routes from Dernagh Crossroads, also came under sustained fire but all the Volunteers managed to escape.

Republicans in Newry will be mobilising for this fitting tribute for four brave IRA volunteers


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Sunday 22 January 2012

COLIN DUFFY - FREE AT LAST !!!!!!!!!!!


Regular readers will know that this blog has been involved in the campaign to free Colin Duffy since he was arrested back in 2009. On Friday he walked out of court a free man after being found not guilty of all charges against him, although he spent 3 years in Maghaberry, interned by remand.

Below is a family members account of Fridays events

Words cannot describe the many emotions we went through today.  When the judge said that the prosecution had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Colie was guilty of all charges we all gasped (not cheered or shouted which was reported by some of the media) and instantly the judge ordered us out of the court and the RUC rushed in and put us out.  We were in total shock if I am honest but after many hugs and some tears of joy our thoughts quickly turned to Brian and we waited anxiously on his verdict. We tried to get back in to the court to give Brian our support but they refused us entry so we waited patiently outside for what seemed like hours.

Then came the devastating news that Brian was not coming home and instantly our joy disappeared. We went from a high to complete devastation.

We then expected Colie, who was with his barrister waiting on Brian's verdict, to appear but there was no sign of him.

Meanwhile the car-park out side was filling up with loyalists who were shouting and jeering. It seemed like forever before one of Colie's legal team came out and told us that they were refusing to release Colie who we now learned was locked in a holding cell with his barrister.  The reason they gave was that Maghaberry Prison refused to accept he was acquitted and wanted confirmation from the judge !!!

Eventually Colie appeared and we left the court to what I can only describe as the most frightening few yards I have ever walked...The loyalists were screaming at us spitting at us, up in our faces threatening us and it was chaotic.  We were all separated by the mob of loyalists and the mob of press and lets not forget the mob of RUC who had allowed them to get right up into our faces.  When we eventually got into our cars they surrounded us spitting all over the windows, thumping the car, standing in front of the car and refusing to move and trying to open the car doors. We eventually got out of the car park and began our journey home.

At home in Lurgan Colie was reunited with his wife and children and it would have broke your heart to see the joy on all their faces.

We off course were absolutely over the moon but truth be told none of us were in the mood for a big celebration as Brian and his family were constantly in our thoughts but we are delighted that Colie is home where he belongs with his wife and family and you can be sure he will be striving just as hard on the outside as he did on the inside to get the August agreement implemented. 

Monday 16 January 2012

Interview with Family and Friends representatives


A West Belfast newspaper, the Andersonstown News, has done a four page spread in relation to the current crisis in Maghaberry prison.  We fully commend the newspaper for their comprehensive coverage of the prison issue. The following articles are from the newspaper:





SPECIAL REPORT  MAGHABERRY PRISON CRISIS

Prisoners staring into the abyss

Former Blanketman Alec McCrory & ex-POW Brendy Conway
 By Gráinne Brinkley
THE ongoing protest by republican prisoners in Maghaberry will be stepped up  if Justice Minister David Ford does not implement the full terms of the August 2010 Roe House agreement.
Representatives of the support group Family and Friends of Republican Prisoners in Maghaberry were speaking to the Andersonstown News as inmates in the prison’s republican Roe House wing continue their no-wash protest at the continued use of full body strip-searching by prison authorities. The Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) claim the use of full body strip-searching is “essential” for security reasons, an argument dismissed by the prisoners and their supporters, who say the inflammatory practice never guaranteed prison security in the past.
It has also been alleged that some long-serving prison officers are using full body strip-searching as “an opportunity to even old scores” against republicans.
The August 2010 Roe House agreement, which was struck  between the republican prisoners and prison authorities with the help of independent facilitators, did away with full body strip-searching in the prison in favour of the non-invasive BOSS chair scanner and other technology-based procedures.  The agreement also allowed for a gradual reduction in controlled movement for republicans within Roe House.
However, that agreement was to break down only a month later after prison authorities claimed it did not cover strip-searching in the reception area of Maghaberry Prison as prisoners were leaving and entering the facility.
The ensuing stand-off with the prison authorities over the issue, say supporters and relatives, has led to nearly 200 forced strip-searches on republicans inmates and the beating of prisoners who refuse to submit to strip-searching. It also saw the start of the latest no-wash protest, in May 2011.
Tensions have escalated to such an extent that the prison’s riot squad now permanently mans part of the wing in place of regular prison officers.
Brendy Conway of Family and Friends of Republican Prisoners in Maghaberry, himself a prisoner in Maghaberry at the time of the Roe House agreement and who helped negotiate that agreement on behalf of the prisoners, said the problem has become so bad that prisoners are “looking into the abyss”.
“Nothing has given rise to any hope at this stage that this can be resolved,” said Brendy. “The prisoners believed that they had been given cast-iron guaranteed commitments by the [prison] administration to do away with the strip-searching completely and to relax controlled movement within a given time-frame.  It was also the understanding of the facilitators that that was the case.  However, the Prison Service have now made it quite clear to the facilitators that the August 12 agreement did not cover  strip-searching in the reception area. Had we known that we would never have signed the agreement.
“Since May 5, the protest has increased. We have a situation now where we have prisoners on various forms of protest – some are on dirty protest and some guys are not, due to health reasons and age. We are looking into the abyss.”
Former blanketman Alex McCrory, also of Family and Friends of Republican Prisoners in Maghaberry, said that elements within the prison and the NIPS “began to work against the agreement” immediately after it was agreed upon by the relevant parties.
“Strip-searching was re-introduced after the agreement  within a very short time and progress on controlled movement was stalled to a snail’s pace,” said Alex. “The prisoners would refuse to comply with the strip-searching as they said it was in breach of the agreement and this then led to forcible strip-searching.  Since August 2010 there have  been almost 200 forced strip-searches in the prison, leading to countless injuries to prisoners.  These searches are very aggressive, involving four to six screws dressed in riot gear wielding shields and batons.  Prisoners are beaten to the ground. They have restraining locks applied to their joints and their clothes are forcibly removed.  On at least two occasions clothes have been cut off from their bodies using scissors.  Several prisoners have received injuries as a result of that. In relation to controlled movement, in Maghaberry today there is a ratio of three screws to one prisoner and five screws to two prisoners. In Long Kesh you had a ratio of two screws to thirty-plus men on a wing with unrestricted movement.  The history of republican wings tells us that prison staff are safe when points of conflict are removed. That is the situation that we find ourselves in at present.”
Alex said the facilitators who helped broker the initial Roe House agreement have told the Friends and Family group that a “a blockage in the system at a very senior level” is preventing the full implementation of the terms agreed in August 2010. He added that long-serving prison guards were the main instigators of the “hassle” the prisoners were getting.
“They [the independent facilitators] said that there are people within the system that are totally opposed to the ending of full body strip-searching for the purposes of security even though there is new technology available that makes a full body strip-search obsolete and unnecessary.
“Certain protestors are singled out, such as Colin Duffy [Lurgan] and Harry Fitzsimons [Ballymurphy], men who have a history going back to Long Kesh. There is a sense that some prison guards are getting their own back now for what happened in the past. They have this old mindset and unfortunately Maghaberry affords them the opportunity to even old scores.”
The current no-wash protest involves some 35 prisoners aligned to different republican groups who are refusing to wash, shave or have their hair cut.
“For example, on the top landing you have ONH  [Óglaigh na hÉireann]-aligned and RSF [Republican Sinn Féin]-aligned prisoners who are putting their human waste on the walls,” explained Alex. “On the bottom landing, prisoners aligned to the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and independent prisoners are putting their human waste on to the landing. Although there are differences in tactics, there is a full protest at present.”
Alex added that current conditions for prisoners in Roe House are “extremely harsh” and the atmosphere within the wing is “extremely hostile and tense”.
“The bottom landing, which holds 14 of the protestors, is being run by the prison riot squad in full riot gear so the ordinary screws have effectively been withdrawn,” he said. “The prisoners are searched leaving the cell, outside the cell and on returning to the cell. The screws in the riot squad are trained to be aggressive and in-your-face so there has been an awful lot of hostility and tension which the prisoners live with on a daily basis. There is always potential for a flare-up because of the tense  relationship between the prisoners and the riot squad. A few of the prisoners have been in jail before and a sizeable number have been in the Kesh, but for the vast majority of them this is their first time in jail.  There are no former blanketmen there, so this would be their first experience of these types of conditions and they find it very, very difficult to cope with, but they are very determined to see the agreement implemented in full.”
NIPS claims that the use of full body strip-searches is essential for security reasons have been rubbished by the Friends and Family group.
“As ex-prisoners, we can tell you that that’s complete nonsense,” said Alex. “A full body strip-search never guaranteed prison security. On the blanket protest we were able to bring in thousands of comms, tobacco, radios and God knows what else despite a full body strip-search and mirror search.  The full body strip-search is about control and domination, it’s as simple as that. It’s the first contact that the prisoner has with the system and in the first contact you have with that system you are compelled to remove your clothing and stand naked before three or four grown men. The ironic thing is that the technology that we are proposing probably enhances security rather than compromises security.”
The support group backs the implementation of the recommendations of the recent independent review into the Northern Ireland Prison Service by Dame Anne Owers, in which she found the Prison Service here to be “dysfunctional” and “ineffective”.
“She recommends that the Prison service as a whole gets other forms of search procedures in place other than full body strip-searching,” said Alex.
“She says there are new technologies that would render the full body strip-search absolutely unnecessary and describes the practice as ‘an invasion of privacy and intrusive’. That report was released two months ago but [Justice Minister] David Ford is saying that it could take two years to implement her recommendations.”
The two men say that prisoners feel that they are not getting “the type of support they deserve from former friends and comrades who should know better and who have been through this whole experience before”.
“Sinn Féin have met with the prisoners on several occasions and met with our group on several occasions and we have discussed the issues inside-out,” said Alex.
“They have made numerous public statements calling on David Ford to implement the agreement, but unfortunately that is not enough.  We believe there has to be some sort of meaningful political action following on from these statements. The DUP are the main obstacle to the implementation of this agreement so there has to be a counter to that. The Family and Friends group are calling on Sinn Féin to use their political strength in a positive way to counter the DUP on this issue and to bring a speedy resolution to this problem.”
Alex accepts that the lack of outside interest in the protest could be because it involves prisoners from micro-republican groups.
“To a large extent that is the case, but I also think that people don’t like the idea of the past coming back to haunt them,” he said.
“The situation is bad at the moment and it is difficult to see how the protest can be escalated without something drastic coming into play.  Obviously that’s not something that’s being talked about by prisoners or the organisations they align to, but we are talking about a situation here where prisoners are living in their own waste.  Now I spent two and a half years on the blanket protest and it cannot get any worse than that. They are under enormous pressure in terms of the physical conditions in which they find themselves and because of that, that puts enormous pressure on the men’s families.”
Brendy Conway added that the prisoners “are not looking anything that was not already agreed as far back as August 2010”.
“Going into 2012 we have prisoners still on dirty protest and locked down 23 hours a day and people going through lengthy trials who are being forcibly stripped twice a day, such as Colin Duffy,” said Brendy.
“The ball’s in their court. To quote the facilitators, an hour could sort this out.”
A spokesperson for the NIPS said the service has “consistently maintained that full body searching on entering and exiting any prison is essential to preserve the security of the establishment and the safety of other prisoners, staff and the wider community in line with practice in other jurisdictions throughout Europe”. The spokesperson continued: “A search facility for separated prisoners at Maghaberry, incorporating a BOSS chair, has been operational since November 17, 2010. In line with the August 2010 agreement, there is no longer any requirement for routine rub-down searching within the separated wings, except where a prisoner is being moved out of the wing. However, the BOSS chair cannot detect non-metallic items. NIPS believes that the existing arrangements are consistent with the August agreement and remains committed to the implementation of the agreement. This position was upheld by the courts when it was challenged by judicial review earlier this year.
“In line with Dame Anne Owers’ recommendation that we should seek an alternative to ‘full body searching’ in her review of NIPS, we are currently researching what, if any, other alternative technologies are available. To date, no viable alternative has been identified.”
Asked about the deployment of the prison riot squad at sections of Roe House in place of regular prison guards, the NIPS spokesperson added: “Members of the NIPS Dedicated Search Team are currently deployed to Roe House at Maghaberry prison for operational reasons, but this arrangement is kept under review by the Governor.
“There is a complaints procedure in place, in particular the Prisoner Ombudsman, should any prisoner believe that NIPS staff have behaved inappropriately.”


SPECIAL REPORT  MAGHABERRY PRISON CRISIS


The bad faith and broken promises




By Staff Reporter
COUNTDOWN TO CONFLICT
1998: Good Friday Agreement is implemented. Political prisoners are released early on the condition that the groups they are affiliated with are on ceasefire and continue to remain on ceasefire

September 2000: The H-Blocks are closed down. Any republicans arrested after the closure of the H-Blocks are now integrated with ‘ordinary decent criminals’ (ODCs) in Maghaberry prison.
“They were mixed in with loyalists and the likes of paedophiles and so on,” said Brendy Conway, former Maghaberry prisoner and member of the Friends and Family of Republican Prisoners in Maghaberry.
“As the number of republican prisoners increased in Maghaberry over the years they spread them out throughout the prison.”

2002: Republican prisoners in Maghaberry begin forms of no-wash protest.  Republican prisoners demand  a separate wing in the prison from loyalist prisoners, after several clashes, and from ODCs.

September 2003: Publication of the Steele Report. Following escalations in the no-wash protests at Maghaberry, the British government commissions a review of conditions at the prison conducted by a team headed up by Sir John Steele, a former Director of the Northern Ireland Prison Service. The report recommends “separation by paramilitary affiliation” of prisoners to help provide a safer environment.  The report recommendations are adopted. Two new wings are now to be built at Maghaberry Prison – Roe House for republican prisoners and Bush House for loyalists.
“On the basis of the Steele Report’s findings, and as part of the agreement then reached between the prisoners and the prison authorities, the prisoners agreed to come off protest until this new wing was built,” said Brendy.
“It was also agreed that the authorities would recognise prisoner structures – i.e. the prisoners would have representatives to deal with the authorities on education, for instance, or the day-to-day running of the landing.”

March 2004: Roe House is opened and republican prisoners move in. However, in a position statement shown to the Andersonstown News, republican prisoners claim the previous agreement with the authorities was instantly reneged upon when the wing was opened and a “criminalisation regime put in place which was again designed to control, degrade and criminalise republican prisoners”. This is alleged to have included: prisoners searched up to six times a day when moving between cells and recreation area; daily cell searches; “degrading” full body strip-searches; prisoners locked up for up to 22 hours a day; three guards to every prisoner when they left their cells.

2004 to 2008: Prisoners begin protesting again, this time in reaction to deteriorating conditions at Roe House. “There were different token protests by the prisoners to get the authorities to change the ratio of guards to prisoners,” said Brendy.
“This approach worked to some extent – they increased the number of prison officers to five officers for two prisoners but then the maximum number of prisoners allowed out was changed from three to eight.”

2008 to 2009: Talks and debates begin between the republican prisoners to decide how best to move the protest forward and improve the conditions for republican prisoners.  “We identified the main areas that we wanted dealt with before we would come off protest,” said Brendy, who was then a prisoner in Roe House.
“These areas were: the controlled movement of prisoners;  the full body strip-searching of prisoners; recognition by the Prison Service that republican prisoners were not ordinary prisoners and therefore should be treated differently.  Strip-searching and controlled movement were the two main areas that we wanted movement on. I was involved in those negotiations and we came to an agreement on how we were going to do it. The first stage of that took place in April 2010.”

April 4, 2010: The prisoners barricade themselves into the canteen area of Roe House for 36 hours. “We were then forcibly removed from the canteen and returned to our cells,” said Brendy.
“After that the protest inevitably increased through April, May and into June. There were 28 prisoners on the two landings in Roe House and all of them were on full protest, which was throwing our waste on to the landing.
“On one occasion West Belfast man Harry Fitzsimons had a disagreement with an SO [senior officer]. He went out for an hour’s exercise, came back and after lunch a riot squad was sent into his cell and severely beat him.  They pulled him off the wing and put him in the SSU (special supervision unit), handcuffed him to a bed, cut his clothes off and strip-searched him. That evening when they took him off the wing all the prisoners wrecked their cells, which signalled the start of the protest escalating.”
The new no-wash protest saw prisoners putting their waste out of their cell doors and windows and refusing to wash.

June 2010: Facilitation between prisoners and the Northern Ireland Prison Service begins. As the stalemate between the prisoners and the prison authorities deepens, the group Family and Friends of Republican Prisoners in Maghaberry is formed outside the prison to raise awareness of the prisoners’ plight. By the end of June a facilitation group made up of Derry community worker Conal McFeely, Peter Bunting from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and Dr Ram Manikkalingam from the Dialogue Advisory Group enters the prison to help mediate a deal between the prisoners, the Northern Ireland Prison Service and the Maghaberry prison administration.
“The prisoners debated this [the involvement of the facilitation group] and agreed to it, under certain conditions – that we would speak to them frankly and at all times be in control of what we were doing,” said Brendy.
“A 10-man negotiating team was then set up by the prisoners to speak for them, who then elected two people to speak on their behalf, who were myself and Colin Duffy.”
The prisoners’ two main demands are: an end to strip searching and for more humane and less intrusive methods to be used instead; the end to controlled movement.
“We met facilitators and then met directly with prison governors,” said Brendy.
“The governors said they were willing to look at our demands, but only if the prisoners came off protest, which we refused.”
Negotiations continue.
August 6, 2010: A “final proposal” is offered by the prison that does not address the prisoners’ two main demands. “The facilitators told us there was nothing more that could be done,” said Brendy.  “So the prisoners decide to increase the protest in jail, which led to a cessation of visits and an increase in tension in the prison.”

August 11: Facilitators re-enter the prison with a new agreement ending full body strip-searching. “It was supposed to remove the practice entirely from within Maghaberry, except in two circumstances,” said Brendy.
“One was if intelligence-led information suggested that a prisoner was smuggling stuff in and this information could be stood over by a credible third party (video footage etc).  Secondly, if the technology we agreed could be used in the new search indicated that there was something there, a full strip-search could be carried out. So we gave them room that they still had an opportunity to carry out strip-searching in certain circumstances.”
The technology the prisoners agreed could be used in place of full body strip-searches includes a BOSS scanner, effectively a metal-detector chair.
“We agreed that if we were leaving the prison to go on visits or go to court we would remove our footwear, belts and outer coats and put them through an airport-type scanner,” said Brendy.
“We would then be given rubdown searches, scanned over with a metal-detector and seated in the Boss chair.  We agreed on that and accepted it.
“In terms of controlled movement, we agreed that, on the signing of the agreement and on the end of our protest, the authorities would immediately increase the number of prisoners allowed out at one time. The number of prisoners allowed out on the landing at one time was increased from three to six straight away.  It was also agreed by December 2010 that the number of prisoners allowed out would increase again, and by early 2011 we would all have freedom of movement within Roe House and the two landings from 8am in the morning to 8pm at night.
“The prison staff were always concerned that it would go back to a Maze-type scenario where there would only be a small amount of guards on the wing at any time.  But we never negotiated for the removal of prison officers from the landing, if there had to be 50 of them we didn’t care as long as it didn’t impede our freedom of movement, i.e. that as prisoners our doors should be opened in the morning and we could move freely about our landings, canteen and yard.”

August 12, 2010: The Roe House agreement is signed. “Within the first few days there were teething problems on controlled movement – which we allowed for – for instance they were not allowing six out at a time as the place was upside down with tradesmen in working etc,” said Brendy.
“But right to this day they have never let six prisoners out as the guards were refusing to let that number out without 15 to 16 staff on the landing.”

September 23, 2010: First forcible full body strip-search since Roe House agreement is carried out on Brendy Conway as he is leaving for court appearance. “I was told to strip but I flatly refused as it was not part of the Roe House agreement,” said Brendy.
“I was told by guards it was part of the agreement as reception was not covered in the agreement.  A big argument then started between prison governors and myself and during this I was forcibly removed from the reception area, brought to the punishment unit of the prison where I was pinned to the floor and forcibly strip-searched.”
Prisoners opt not to go back on protest but to inform facilitators of the agreement breach against Brendy Conway. The recently inactive group Family and Friends of Republican Prisoners in Maghaberry is reformed on the outside.

November 17, 2010: New search facility opens adjacent to Roe House. This new search facility contains the aforementioned Boss chair and scanners.  Prisoners are now searched leaving and entering Roe House to visit other parts of the prison as well as being strip-searched in the main reception area of Maghaberry when they are leaving and entering the prison site.
On the first day the new search facility at Roe House is used a mouth search is introduced on prisoners which they refuse to cooperate with.  This sparks a stand-off between prison staff and prisoners in the run-up to Christmas which leads to the cessation of prison visits. Facilitators are brought in again and it is agreed that conversing between prisoner and guard would be seen as acceptable in place of a mouth search.  Visits begin again in the week leading up to Christmas.

Early 2011: Prisoners continue meeting with facilitators and political parties visiting the prison while the Family and Friends group continue their campaign on the outside.

May 5, 2011: Prisoners begin protest again. The Prison Service makes it clear to facilitators that the agreement did not cover strip-searching in reception area.
“The prisoners deemed the agreement as effectively over as authorities were no longer adhering to it,” said Brendy.
“Prisoners then wrecked their cells and began a no-wash protest again. What needs to be made absolutely clear is that as far as the facilitators were concerned their interpretation of the Roe House agreement of August 12, particularly in regards to full body strip-searching, was always in line with the prisoners’ interpretation.”

October 2011: An independent review into the Northern Ireland Prison Service is published. The independent review, commissioned by the Minister for Justice David Ford and headed up by Dame Anne Owers, finds the Prison Service here “dysfunctional” and “ineffective”. One of its key recommendations is the need to do away with full body strip-searching in favour of using other technologies.
The no-wash protest continues.




SPECIAL REPORT  MAGHABERRY PRISON CRISIS


Sister speaks of brother’s beating

 

By Gráinne Brinkley
THE family of a West Belfast man currently on the no-wash protest in Maghaberry prison have vowed to  stand by him 100 per cent “no matter what decisions he makes” as fears of a protest escalation mount.
Lilian Fitzsimons, sister of 43-year-old Harry Fitzsimons from Ballymurphy, was speaking to the Andersonstown News as her brother continues on the no-wash protest in the Roe House wing of the County  Antrim prison.
Harry’s family say the father-of-four has been severely beaten on two occasions by guards at the prison, with the last attack in May 2011 leaving him with a suspected cracked rib and extensive cuts and bruising to his face and body.
Speaking about the most recent beating, Lilian said her brother was given a 15-minute ultimatum to agree to a strip-search before it was brutally forced upon him in his prison cell.
“When they [the prison guards] came in they got him on the ground,” she said.
“While they were beating him and trailing his clothes off him, one of them was ramming a knuckle into a pressure point below his ear constantly.  There were six of them that came in and it lasted about 15 to 20 minutes.”
Lilian said when she heard about the attack and tried to contact the prison, she was told nothing of the injuries that her brother had suffered.
“When I asked about him and said I heard that he was beaten I was told ‘No, no, no. We don’t beat our prisoners.  Don’t be silly, we don’t beat our prisoners’,” she said.
“I had a visit the next day with him and when I went up I saw the physical injuries on him and I could see the cuts where they had kicked his glasses into his face when he was lying on the ground.
“You could actually see the other visitors and prisoners that were in the visiting room that day taken aback when they saw Harry.  It was awful and it was sad, particularly knowing that you couldn’t do anything about it.  Even for me to hug him was hurting him.”
Lilian said a priest at the prison spoke to her about Harry’s injuries.
“He said to me, ‘He’s alive but he didn’t get that bumping into a door.’”

Headaches
The family say it was six days before a doctor examined Harry’s injuries.
“The prison was saying he was refusing to see a doctor.  He wasn’t as he was in absolute agony,” said Lilian.
“Harry wears prescription glasses so he wasn’t able to see properly and he also gets terrible headaches when he has no glasses. The reason they gave for the savage beating is that when Harry was throwing his waste out on to the landing after the cell doors were opened some of it got on the prison guards’  shoes and that’s why they entered his cell.”
Lilian said that after the first beating her brother received in April 2010, he was put in the special supervision unit for 14 days.
“They didn’t even let his solicitor in,” she said. “We didn’t know if he was alive or dead or what physical state he was in as they gave him a real physical beating that time too. Families are given such little information and to us it seems these people think it’s their God-given right to beat any republican in the jail.  It’s the same administration and regime that’s running the jail as it was pre-hunger strike and I get the impression that they can do what they want.  This leaves the family so distressed, it hurts you and it makes you so angry and that’s why people are protesting on the outside as they know it just isn’t right.
“This isn’t normal, if this happened anywhere else in the world there would be such an uproar about it. In this day and age they should not be allowed to get away with stuff like that.”
Lilian added that despite the gruelling conditions her brother has to endure, “he is still very strong in body and mind”.
“No matter what, he stands up for what he believes in and a lot of people will stand by him,” she said.
“Nothing would get him down and this isn’t something that would break him, if anything it would make him determined to carry on.
“As a family we will stand by him 100 per cent no matter what decisions he makes, we will be there for him and we will stand by him.”



SDLP to raise escalating prison row in Assembly

The SDLP are to table a motion in the Assembly on the deepening crisis in Maghaberry prison.

Upper Falls SDLP councillor Tim Attwood said: "The SDLP has made representations to the Department of Justice in relation to the Anne Owers report [a review of the Northern Ireland Prison Service published in October 2011] that states that an alternative needs to be sought to full body searches.

"In these representations the SDLP have asked the department to ensure that an alternative to full body searching is found as quickly as possible as obviously there are alternatives that can be looked at given the developments in technology with airport scanners.

"The SDLP Assembly group has also prepared a motion that will be tabled at the Assembly to try and expediate that matter:  The Party has also tabled a motion in relation to the Marian Price situation which will be discussed in due course."




SPECIAL REPORT  MAGHABERRY PRISON CRISIS


Concern over disease outbreak


By Gráinne Brinkley

POLITICAL representatives and human rights groups have called on the Northern Ireland Prison Service and the Justice Minister David Ford to implement the full terms of the 2010 Roe House agreement.
A spokesperson for British Irish Rights Watch, which recently successfully lobbied for the transfer of desperately ill West Belfast man Brendan Lillis from Maghaberry to the City Hosptial, said they have  “concerns regarding the escalating dirty protest” at the prison.
“We have visited HMP Maghaberry and have spoken to a number of prisoners at Roe House about freedom of association, lockdown, access to legal representation and other matters,” said the spokesperson. “We have observed a number of legal challenges brought by prisoners concerning the regime and we are concerned about possible disease spreading at Roe House, specifically hepatitis.  We have made representation to the ECPT [European Convention for the Prevention of Torture] in Strasbourg and the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] in Geneva.”
West Belfast Sinn Féin MLA Jennifer McCann – herself a former political prisoner – who’s a  member of the Assembly’s Justice Committee, visited Maghaberry in December with the committee’s Vice Chair, Foyle Sinn Féin MLA Raymond McCartney.
“Prisoners were still being strip-searched and locked up in their cells and it was very clear that there had been no movement on the part of the prison administration to implement the recommendations set out in the agreement reached in August 2010,” said Ms McCann. “We met with representatives of the prison administration immediately afterwards and we once again expressed our concern about the conditions within the jail and the fact that the agreement had still not been implemented.  The following day we met with the Prison Ombudsman’s office and requested a meeting with David Ford on the issue.  We are very clearly saying that strip-searches are degrading and humiliating and there are other methods of searching that can be, and indeed are already, used within the prison;  therefore there is absolutely no reason to strip-search prisoners.  During question time in the Assembly that week we called again on David Ford to intervene to resolve the issue by ensuring the agreement is put in place now.”
Responding to calls by the Family and Friends of the Republican Prisoners in Maghaberry for  “some sort of meaningful political action” from Sinn Féin, Ms McCann said her party has been “proactive” on the issue.
“We have consistently called on David Ford and the prison administration to implement the agreement and to ensure that the prisoners are treated with dignity and respect,” she said.
“We also raised the issue of the ongoing detention of the two life-sentenced prisoners, Marian Price and Martin Corry, who had their licences revoked, and called for both of them to be released immediately.  We hope to have an early meeting with David Ford to raise all these issues again.”


WE SAY... (Andersonstown News Editorial)

Prison protest must be resolved now

Our comprehensive reports this week on the 'dirty' protest in Maghabery Prison will bring back disturbing memories for many of our readers.

And if the deescriptions of prisoners being beaten and the accounts of young men living in their own excrement are reminiscent of similar reports in this paper 30-plus years ago that's because the prison administration is implementing policies which belong to yesteryear.

The recent report by Anne Owers laid out the facts for all to see.

The prison service, she said, was "ineffective" and "dysfunctional".

Justice Minister David Ford, who has had a mixed performance at the helm of our most important ministry, tried to coat that bitter pill for the refusniks within the prison service with the promise of generous redundancy measures as part of the price of reform.

But even he didn't dispute Ms Ower's central thesis:  if you allow backwoodsmen in the prison service to dictate policy within the jail then you can expect confrontation.

However, despite the hard-hitting nature of Ms Ower's report and the revelation by the Justice Minister that a majority of serving prison officers were with the service during the dark H-Block era, little has been done to resolve this explosive issue.  Indeed the groundbreaking 2010 Roe House Agreement, brokered through the good offices of intermediaries, has been torn to shreds by prison chiefs with their insistence that strip-searching will continue.

While those heading the prisons may parse the full content of that agreement by claiming it covers "this but not that", thier claims will be seen as so much sanctimonious twaddle.

The Roe House Agreement should be honoured in full and that means an end to the punitive strip-searching of prisoners.

It is equally vital that the 'riot squad' be withdrawn from Roe House and efforts made to bring calm to a dangerous and volatile situation.

Readers of this paper know only too well that trouble within the prisons inevitably spills over onto the streets.  And of course violence on the streets will serve the interests of two groups who oppose the peace process:  dissident elements on the republican side and those within the higher echelons of the Justice Department who remain 'at war' with republicans, mainstream and dissident.

We are told that there exists a "Continuity RUC" within the PSNI.  How much more true then is it that there exist a "Continuity warders" within the prison service?

Given the seriousness of the prison stand-off, it's essential that the Stormont Executive intervenes directly to bring these matters to a swift and peaceful resolution.

It is a fact that the majority of the protesting prisoners belong to dissident republican factions which enjoy little support among the nationalist public.  Nevertheless, it's equally true that all nationalists support the right of these prisoners to be treated humanely and with respect.  An attack on the protesting prisoners by unreconstructed warders and prison bosses will be seen by nationalists as an attack on the peace process.

And those in authority who attack the peace process from within the prisons can expect to be faced down as surely today as they were in 1981.

http://friendsofcolinduffy.com/InterviewwithFamilyandFriendsrepresentatives.aspx