Prison Escape

On 19 July 1973 Hughes was arrested on the Falls Road along with Gerry Adams and Tom Cahill. They were interrogated for in excess of 12 hours at the Springfield Road Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks and later Castlereagh before being transported to Long Kesh.

On 8 December Hughes escaped inside a rolled up mattress in the back of a dustcart, and fled across the border to Dublin. After ten days he had returned to Belfast after assuming a new identity, becoming a travelling toy salesman named "Arthur McAllister". For five months Hughes lived in Myrtlefield Park near Malone Road, and was believed to be the new O/C of the IRA in Belfast following the arrest of Ivor Bell in February.

On 10 May 1974 Hughes was arrested following a tip-off, and the house was found to contain a submachine gun, four rifles, two pistols and several thousand rounds of ammunition. Hughes was subsequently sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Three years after his arrest Hughes was involved in a fracas, and received an additional five year sentence for assaulting a prison officer. As he was convicted after 1 March 1976 Hughes was transferred from the compounds to the H-Blocks and lost his Special Category Status. He refused to wear prison uniform and joined the blanket protest. Shortly after arriving in the H-Blocks Hughes became the OC of the IRA prisoners, and in March 1978 ordered the prisoners to begin the dirty protest.

On the 2nd December 1971 three men escaped from Crumlin Road jail in 1971. He escaped with Dutch Doherty and Hugh MCann. One of those who escaped went on record about his ill treatment and his subsequent successful escape was Ardoyne Republican, Martin Meehan. This is an excerpt of an interview taken from the book, From Fetters to Freedom by Micheál MacUileagóid.

“I was arrested on the 9 November, 1971. I got a sever beating by the British Army and received 47 stitches to the back of my head. To save me from further brutality I pretended I was unconscious and I ended up in the hospital. I was in a bad way but I was still conscious of what was going on around me. Anyway after getting the stitches I was taken to Holywood Barracks on a stretcher. Holywood was a notorious centre at the time. Most people were brought out of Holywood Barracks on stretchers but with me it was the other way around. While there I was put through a very degrading and brutal interrogation after which they brought be down to Crumlin Road where I was detained.

“I was there a week when the Crumlin Kangaroos escaped during a football match. The first thing everyone said after that was, ‘Well that’s it, no one is ever going to get out of here again’. The screws closed everything down for two weeks while army engineers moved in to make the prison more secure. At that time the remand prisoners were in ‘B’ Wing while the detainees where held in ‘C’ Wing. Eventually they let us out to play a Gaelic match and they let three spectators out with us. I was on a walking stick at the time. I was supposed to be one of the linesmen. I remember that me and a fella called Micky Maguire were walking around the side of the pitch. Micky’s father, Ned Maguire, escaped in the 1940s. We passed over this manhole cover and we heard it rattle. On further examination we realised that it went down to a depth of about six feet and had a pool of water in the bottom. We were not sure how deep the water was but we soon hatched an escape plan. There were screws surrounding the pitch with walkie talkies and there were armed soldiers in the pill boxes. There were now barbed wire fences and corrugated iron fences all the way round the pitch so that you couldn’t get anywhere near the perimeter wall. We began to talk about it and throw some ideas about. We eventually came to the conclusion that if we could get into the manhole at half time and stay there until nightfall then maybe we would have a chance of reaching the perimeter wall and getting over it like the lads had done the previous fortnight. It was a chance in a million. When we put it to the OC he had grave reservations about the plot but after a lot of coaxing he eventually conceded and so the plan swung into motion.

“We made a rope out of sheets. We then made a three pronged hook out of the legs of a chair and bandaged it with sheets to muffle the sound as it hit the wall. Then somebody came up with the suggestion that we should cover ourselves from head to toe with a pound of butter so as to protect us from the cold and damp. We overlooked the problems this would cause whenever we tried to climb the rope. We kept sliding back down again because our hands were that slippery. At half time during a Gaelic match on 2 December, we acted out our plan. The lads from a half circle while some of the other lads distracted the screws. We opened the lid and me and Dutch Doherty dropped in. We had ropes around our waists just in cease the water in the hole was too deep. There was only enough room for the two of us and we were up to our necks in ice cold water. Then another lad called Hugh McCann climbed in on top of us. He was not supposed to go on the escape but he got into the manhole and the lid was placed back over us. It was a tight squeeze. McCann was resting on our shoulders and it was very uncomfortable. Meanwhile up above the lads continued with the match. Some of

In the 1980s Portlaoise Jail in County Laois housed hundreds of republican prisoners. Although there had been previous escapes and escape attempts, the grim jail, guarded as it was by armed troops and major fortifications had a formidable reputation as one of the most secure prisons in Europe. But November 1985 witnessed a daring escape by republican POWs which left them within yards of freedom.

The meticulously planned and cooly executed escape operation began on the morning of Sunday 24 November when prisoners and prison staff were attending Mass in E3 Wing. Twelve republican prisoners gathered on the landing of the wing. One of the prisoners produced a handgun and ordered prison staff not to move. As the men wearing coats over fake warders' uniforms, passed through the first gate it accidentally swung shut, trapping the one armed republican prisoner with the prison officers.

The rest of the would-be escapees moved to re-open the gate but their unfortunate comrade, appreciating how critical time was, selflessly waved them away, thereby giving up his opportunity to escape. Standing guard over the warders he ensured that they would not raise the alarm.

Having discarded their overcoats and using duplicate keys, the escape team quickly opened six further steel gates. Not possessing keys for the last two of the steel doors, the escapees deployed an explosive charge to blow them open. Once through these, there was only a chain-link fencing and gate topped with barbed wire and railings standing between the republicans and freedom.

Capturing several warders at the second last steel door, the prisoners detonated an explosive charge against the lock -- but despite the lock being blown away, the force of the blast buckled the door, jamming it shut.

At this point, although armed, the would-be escapees realised that vital minutes and the initiative had been lost. The O/C of the republican prisoners was informed of the situation and word was passed to the Volunteer who sacrificed his chance to escape, to surrender his weapon. Having accepted their situation the escaped team offered no resistance.

All the prisoners in the jail were then locked in their cells and, at 2.30pm a full scale cell search and strip search started. The prisoners remained locked up until 9.20am on the Monday morning.

At 11am, all the prisoners were ordered out into the exercise yard where they were surrounded by a large force of warders and troops armed with machine guns and high powered hoses. They were kept in the yard without food until 5pm when they were told that they had to go to the basement cells in groups of 12 to be strip-searched again.

Any prisoner who refused to remove his clothes was set upon by up to 12 Gardaí and warders who tore his clothes off. The prisoners were also forced to go through an anal search, being held upside down and beaten if they refused to accede to this degrading practice.

At least 60 prisoners were injured during this searching, most suffering cuts and bad bruising, but two men -- Kevin Campbell from Tyrone and Gerard Harte from Lurgan -- were severely beaten and badly hurt.

During the strip-searching the prisoners shoes were taken from them and not returned. On Tuesday, 26 November, the prisoners were again ordered out into the yard and kept there for hours in the freezing cold with no footwear. The shoes were not returned until until Wednesday morning.

The twelve republican POWs who made the daring escape attempt were Martin Ferris, Eamonn Nolan, Jimmy Gavin, Peter Rogers, Sean McGettigan, Peter Lynch, Liam Townson, Tommy McMahon, Angelo Fusco, Robert Russell, James Clarke and John Crawley.