Convicts call the shots in N Ireland prison

He conceded there was no way to guarantee security when prisoners still had handguns. Prison authorities have good reason to fear their inmates. The IRA killed 22 prison guards and the Maze’s deputy governor from late 1970s to mid-1980s. In 1983, the IRA organized a mass breakout by 38 prisoners. Three escapees are still facing extradition proceedings in San Francisco.

More than 600 members of Northern Ireland’s half-dozen paramilitary groups the IRA and smaller Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) on the Catholic side and four pro-British gangs on the Protestant side live cheek by jowl in their own segregated wings of the Maze’s eight H-shaped blocks. Each enjoys liberal perks reflecting their comrades’ ability to wreak havoc on the streets of Northern Ireland.Prisoners elect “officers commanding” to negotiate directly with prison Governor Martin Mogg. They are not locked in their cells day or night, they won’t let the guards search their wings without a day’s advance warning, and earn university degrees, criminology being a favorite subject.

Each block has computer facilities. Politically influential prisoners have mobile phones. Prisoners who serve 10 years or more get holiday paroles in summer and Christmas.But Saturday’s shooting of Wright, 37, by three INLA members exposed the perils of this lax regime. Two of the inmates transferred to the Maze, after using a smuggled handgun to take a guard hostage in another prison, crawled along the roof to Wright’s wing and shot him five times in the back. The closest watchtower had been unmanned.

Wright’s killing provoked his own outlawed group to kill 45-year-old Seamus Dillon and wound three other Catholics outside a rural hotel. The province is braced for more bloodshed.David Trimble, Protestant leader of the main party in Northern Ireland, led his Ulster Unionists into a fiery meeting on Wednesday with British officials, demanding an end to what he called a policy of appeasing “the terrorists” in the Maze. He called the meeting “very disappointing.”The government reiterated its plans to resume random cell searches, something it had decided to do after detecting the IRA’s tunnel in March.

But actually getting into cells can mean violent confrontations, which happened in wings “held” by the IRA and the biggest pro-British paramilitary group, the Ulster Defense Association. In April, the latter broke onto the Maze roof, set fires and posed for photographers wielding fake assault rifles, wearing masks and warning authorities not to punish them for the IRA’s tunnel.

Wright’s loyalist volunteers attacked five prison officers’ homes and burned down their entire wing in August after Wright demanded the same Maze facilities as other paramilitary groups enjoyed, including a children’s playpen for visitors. Ironically, Wright was moved next door to the enemy INLA.The privileges owe their origins to 1981, when dozens of IRA and INLA prisoners refused food in hopes of forcing the British to concede “political” status, including no assigned labor, no uniforms, free movement within wings among their demands.

When the British refused, 10 inmates starved to death and street violence swept Catholic areas of Northern Ireland. Recognizing the public-relations disaster it had suffered, the government gradually conceded political status in everything but name.