Former governor of NI's maze prison to run West Bank jail

A former governor of Northern Ireland’s notorious Maze prison will run the West Bank jail where six Palestinians wanted by Israel were moved earlier this week.

The transfer of the six men, including four assassins of an Israeli Cabinet minister, was part of a US-brokered deal that led to Israel lifting its siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

The six men had been holed up in Arafat’s compound since Israeli troops took over Ramallah on the first day of a military offensive March 29.

Israel initially said it would only release Arafat from confinement if the six were handed over, but then relented and agreed to having them jailed in a Palestinian lockup, under British and US supervision,

the six were taken to the West Bank town of Jericho on Wednesday.

The arrangements of their imprisonment were worked out by an advance team headed by Andrew Coyle, former governor of London’s Brixton Prison, where several IRA fighters and others accused of involvement in terrorism were held.

Coyle will soon be replaced by a former governor of the Maze, who will supervise the imprisonment of the six on a permanent basis, said a British official in Jericho. He would not give the name of the former Maze commander.

Built in 1976, the Maze had eight H-shaped blocks designed for a total of 800 prisoners.

Almost from the day it opened, IRA inmates refused to wear their new prison uniforms and smeared excrement on their cell walls, while on the outside the IRA assassinated prison officers.

The campaign reached its climax in 1981, when 10 prisoners starved themselves to death. Two years later, 38 IRA prisoners escaped, the biggest in British penal history. The Maze closed in 2000, as part of Northern Ireland’s peace process.