Parts of Belfast sealed off due to rooftop 'sympathy' protest
Parts of Belfast city centre were sealed off today as police negotiated with a man on the roof of a building who claimed to be protesting at the prison conditions at Maghaberry jail.
Traffic was diverted away from parts of Royal Avenue, North Street and the Castlecourt Shopping Centre as officers tried to talk the man down.
He was spotted at around 1.30am on the roof.
Bemused office workers and shop assistants making their way to work stopped this morning to look at the negotiation taking place in the city centre.
Prison visits to two wings of the jail were cancelled after inmates took to the roof to demand the segregation of republican and loyalist prisoners..
The protest at Maghaberry Jail near Lisburn in County Antrim, Northern Ireland began yesterday afternoon while a British-government appointed review team visited the jail as part of its inquiries into staff and inmates’ concerns.
Three inmates were today still on the roof of Bush House and another was on the roof of Roe House.
One of the protesters is believed to be a dissident republican while the remaining three have no paramilitary backgrounds.
At one stage during the protest yesterday the prisoners unfurled a banner reading “Segregation Now”.
In June a similar protest involving eight prisoners took place at Roe House.
Dissident republicans have also been involved in a dirty protest and have warned that it could escalate into a hunger strike similar to the one which saw 10 prisoners starved to death in 1981.
Army bomb disposal experts were also called yesterday to the wings to deal with devices which turned out to be hoaxes.
Earlier this week Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy appointed a three-man panel to investigate staff and prisoners’ concerns about safety in the prison.
Republicans and loyalists have argued that they should have their own wings at the jail.
A spokesperson for the Northern Ireland office said prison visits to Bush and Roe House could not go ahead today while the protests took places.
However visits to other wings in the prison would go ahead as normal.
