Maze Prison escape

) taken following the November 1974 tunnel escape attempt. In this escape, three IRA volunteers escaped but were later apprehended in the Twinbrook estate. One IRA volunteer, Hugh Coney, was shot dead just outside the perimeter wall. IRA volunteers regarded themselves as prisoners of war with a duty to escape. During the Troubles, Irish republican prisoners had escaped from custody en masse on several occasions. On 17 November 1971, nine prisoners, dubbed the "Crumlin Kangaroos", escaped from Crumlin Road Jail when rope ladders were thrown over the wall. Two prisoners were recaptured, but the remaining seven managed to cross the border into the Republic of Ireland and appeared at a press conference in Dublin. On 17 January 1972, seven internees escaped from the prison ship HMS Maidstone by swimming to freedom, resulting in their being dubbed the "Magnificent Seven". On 31 October 1973, three leading IRA members, including former Chief of Staff Seamus Twomey, escaped from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin when a hijacked helicopter landed in the exercise yard of the prison. Nineteen IRA members escaped from Portlaoise Jail on 18 August 1974 after overpowering guards and using gelignite to blast through gates. Thirty-three prisoners attempted to escape from Long Kesh on 6 November 1974 after digging a tunnel. IRA member Hugh Coney was shot dead by a sentry, 29 other prisoners were captured within a few yards of the prison and the remaining three were back in custody within 24 hours. In March 1975, ten prisoners escaped from the courthouse in Newry while on trial for attempting to escape from Long Kesh. On 10 June 1981, eight IRA members on remand, including Angelo Fusco, Paul Magee and Joe Doherty, escaped from Crumlin Road Jail. The prisoners took prison officers hostage using three handguns that had been smuggled in, took their uniforms and shot their way out of the prison. ==1983 escape==

HM Prison Maze was considered one of the most escape-proof prisons in Europe. In addition to fences, each H-Block was encompassed by an concrete wall topped with barbed wire, and all gates on the complex were made of solid steel and electronically operated. Prisoners had been planning the escape for several months. Bobby Storey and Gerry Kelly had started working as orderlies in H7, which allowed them to identify weaknesses in the security systems, and six handguns had been smuggled into the prison. By 2:50 pm the prisoners were in control of H7 without an alarm being raised. A dozen prisoners also took uniforms from the officers, and the officers were also forced to hand over their car keys and details of where their cars were, for possible later use during the escape. Outside the prison the IRA had planned a support operation involving 100 armed members but due to a miscalculation of five minutes, the prisoners found no transport waiting for them and were forced to flee across fields or hijack vehicles. The British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) immediately activated a contingency plan; by 4:25 pm a cordon of vehicle checkpoints was in place around the prison, and others were later set up in strategic positions across Northern Ireland, resulting in the recapture of one prisoner at 11:00 pm. Twenty prison officers were injured during the escape, thirteen were kicked and beaten, four stabbed, and two shot. One prison officer, James Ferris, who had been stabbed, died after suffering a heart attack during the escape. ==Reaction==

The escape was a propaganda coup and morale boost for the IRA, with Irish republicans dubbing it the "Great Escape". The Hennessy Report was published on 26 January 1984 placing most of the blame for the escape on prison staff and made recommendations to improve security at the prison. The report also placed blame with the designers of the prison, the Northern Ireland Office and successive prison governors who had failed to improve security. James Prior announced that the prison's governor had resigned, and that there would be no ministerial resignations as a result of the report's findings.{{cite journal|last1=Gay|first1=Oonagh|last2=Powell|first2=Thomas|title=Individual ministerial responsibility-issues and examples |page=22 |date=5 April 2004 |publisher=House of Commons | journal=House of Commons Research Papers On 25 October 1984, nineteen prisoners appeared in court on charges relating to the death of prison officer James Ferris, sixteen charged with his murder. A pathologist determined that the stab wounds Ferris suffered would not have killed a healthy man. The judge acquitted all sixteen as he could not correlate the stabbing to the heart attack. ==Escapees==

Fifteen escapees were captured on the day, including four who were discovered by the RUC hiding underwater in the river Lagan using reeds to breathe. Escapee Kieran Fleming drowned in the Bannagh River near Kesh in December 1984, while attempting to escape from an ambush by the Special Air Service (SAS) in which fellow IRA member Antoine Mac Giolla Bhrighde was killed. Gerard McDonnell was captured in Glasgow in June 1985 along with four other IRA members, including Brighton bomber Patrick Magee, and convicted of conspiring to cause sixteen explosions across England. Séamus McElwaine was killed by the SAS in Roslea in April 1986 and Gerry Kelly and Brendan McFarlane were returned to prison in December 1986 after being extradited from the Netherlands, where they had been arrested in January 1986, leaving twelve escapees still on the run. Pádraig McKearney was killed by the SAS along with seven other members of the IRA's East Tyrone Brigade in the Loughgall ambush in May 1987, the IRA's biggest single loss of life since the 1920s. In November 1987 Paul Kane and one of the masterminds of the escape, Dermot Finucane—brother of assassinated solicitor Pat Finucane—were arrested in Granard, County Longford on extradition warrants issued by the British authorities. Robert Russell was extradited to Northern Ireland in August 1988 after being captured in Dublin in 1984, as was Paul Kane in April 1989. In March 1990 the Supreme Court of Ireland in Dublin blocked the extradition of James Pius Clarke and Dermot Finucane on the grounds they "would be probable targets for ill-treatment by prison staff" if they were returned to prison in Northern Ireland. Kevin Barry Artt, Pól Brennan, James J. Smyth and Terrence Kirby, collectively known as the "H-Block 4", were arrested in the United States between 1992 and 1994 and fought lengthy legal battles against extradition. Smyth was extradited back to Northern Ireland in 1996 and returned to prison, before being released in 1998. The men officially remain fugitives but in 2003 Her Majesty's Prison Service said they were not being "actively pursued". Brennan, who had married a US citizen, was deported from the United States to the Republic of Ireland in August 2009. Tony Kelly was arrested in Letterkenny, County Donegal in October 1997 but was not extradited. Dermot McNally, who had been living in the Republic of Ireland and was tracked down in 1996 and Dermot Finucane, received an amnesty in January 2002, leaving them to return to Northern Ireland. Tony McAllister was not granted a similar amnesty. , Gerard Fryers and Séamus Campbell had not been traced since the escape. ==Mistreatment==

The captured prisoners were mistreated by prison officers upon return. During the extradition hearing of fugitive and Maze Prison escapee James J. Smyth at the U.S. district court in San Francisco, Maze prison governor John Baxter admitted that guards brutalised the returning inmates following the 1983 breakout and later lied in court by denying the prisoners had suffered dog bites. He said the officers involved had never been disciplined and there were no plans to do so. U.S. district judge Barbara A. Caulfield wrote under the "Maze prison" section of her finding that: 6. The republican prisoners who escaped but were captured and returned were forced to run a gauntlet of guard dogs which were allowed to bite them. The guards ordered attack dogs upon the republican prisoners as they were moved to other cell blocks. The dogs bit several prisoners. The prisoners were denied medical care for several days. Many of the escapees were rounded up and returned to the Maze immediately after the escape. Upon their return to the Maze, prison officers kicked and punched the returned escapees and repeatedly called them "Fenian bastards". Numerous prison officers took part in the mistreatment of the returned escapees. 7. There was no evidence that prisoners in the loyalist wing were similarly treated. That is, of the loyalist and republican prisoners who did not escape, only the republicans were moved, beaten, kicked, bitten by dogs, and subjected to religious and political insults. 8. Several prisoners brought actions for damages for their treatment following the escape. The court in Northern Ireland found that there was a widespread conspiracy to conceal the fact of the assault of the prisoners. 9. No disciplinary action was ever taken against the prison officers for their abuse of the prisoners in connection with the escape or for perjuring themselves. The current prison governor testified that there are no plans to discipline the prison officers involved and the "case is closed" as far as he is concerned. None of the testifying prison officials knew whether any of the prison officers who participated in the abuse of the returned escapees or who perjured themselves are still employed at the Maze prison. The Maze Prison governor, John Baxter, acknowledged that many of the guards who are at the Maze now have been there since the 1983 escape. ... 12. Ex-prisoners from the Maze are subject to increased scrutiny by the security forces. Several witnesses on behalf of James Smyth testified that ex-prisoners are frequently subject to harassment by the security forces. 13. Sean Mackin was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of a prison officer's daughter. Mackin testified that while he was in the Crumlin Road prison before trial, he was treated differently from other prisoners in that every time an officer was killed, he would either be beaten in his cell or put in solitary confinement. ... 15. Paul Kane was a 1983 Maze escapee who was extradited from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland in 1989. During the course of his extradition proceedings, he applied to the Minister of Justice in Ireland not to send him back because he feared being assaulted by the prison staff and members of the security forces. The Minister of Justice denied the application and guaranteed that Kane would not be abused upon his return. As soon as Kane was handed over to the security forces at the Northern Ireland border, verbal abuse, including anti-Catholic remarks, began. Once put in a holding cell in Belfast, handcuffs were placed very tightly on his wrists and despite numerous requests, the handcuffs were not removed or loosened. Kane also was roughed up by the security forces within hours of being returned to Northern Ireland. ==Subsequent escape attempts==

On 10 August 1984 loyalist prisoner Benjamin Redfern, a member of the Ulster Defence Association, attempted to escape from HM Prison Maze by hiding in the back of a refuse lorry, but died after being caught in the crushing mechanism. On 7 July 1991, IRA prisoners Nessan Quinlivan and Pearse McAuley escaped from HM Prison Brixton, where they were being held on remand. They escaped using a gun that had been smuggled into the prison, wounding a motorist as they fled. On 9 September 1994 six prisoners—an armed robber, Danny McNamee and four IRA members including Paul Magee—escaped from HM Prison Whitemoor. The prisoners, in possession of two guns that had been smuggled into the prison, scaled the prison walls using knotted sheets. A guard was shot and wounded during the escape, and the prisoners were captured after being chased across fields by guards and the police. On 10 December 1997 IRA prisoner Liam Averill, serving a life sentence after being convicted of the murder of two Protestants, escaped from the Maze dressed as a woman. He was not apprehended and was granted an amnesty in 2001. == Dramatisation ==

The prison break was dramatised in the 2017 film Maze, written and directed by Stephen Burke, and starring Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and Barry Ward. ==Notes==