NI prison officers facing death threats

Prison officers who escort inmates to court in Northern Ireland have been ordered to scrap normal routes due to paramilitary death threats, it emerged today.

Plans to transfer the specialist warders to a new depot have also been thrown into confusion by the heightening risk of attack from dissident republican terrorists, sources disclosed.

With the alert believed to be linked to a Real IRA and Continuity IRA dirty protest inside Maghaberry Jail near Lisburn, Co Antrim, fears have intensified that an officer will be murdered.

During briefings to the Prisons Escort Group, strict instructions were issued to avoid the traditional M1 motorway route from the top-security complex to courts in Belfast.

“Police are so concerned officers were all told to use back roads,” one source said.

“These men are going about in tin cans that are easily identifiable to terrorists.

“If they get stuck in traffic in a staunchly republican village like Toome they would be sitting ducks.”

A Northern Ireland Prison Service spokesman confirmed staff were told about increased terrorist targeting.

“In recent days we have received a number of warnings of threats to prison staff in general,” he said.

“We can’t say if it was specific to the escort group, but we’re not disputing that either.”

The unit, which was set up to ease the pressure on prison regimes when officers were called out to take inmates to court hearings, is still based at the defunct Maze Prison in Lisburn.

It is believed plans were in place to transfer officers and vehicles to a new depot at the disused Crumlin Court House in Co Antrim.

These have now been shelved, however, and the switch will be to Maghaberry instead.

But even that may be put on hold as the authorities assess what the likely outcome of the protest inside the jail will be.

Dissident republicans behind bars seeking segregation from loyalists have been smearing excrement over their cell walls in a bid to have their demands met.

As the crisis intensifies, bombs have been planted at warders homes in parts of Belfast and Co Down.

Even though loyalists also angered by the prison regime were behind these attacks, unionist politicians insisted the new threat came from rogue republican supporters.

Edwin Poots, a Democratic Unionist former Northern Ireland Assembly member for the Lisburn area, insisted the danger was real and urged the British overnment not to put lives at risk.

Marian Price, a spokeswoman for the Real-IRA linked Irish Republican Prisoners’ Welfare Association, accepted the threat was probably linked to the protest.

She warned: “These men belong to organisations which history has taught us do not stand by and allow their men to be brutalised and tortured.”