Word: maze
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...Minister Margaret Thatcher, Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey and the often warring, always uneasy Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland could have received. Last week, 53 days after they had begun to fast, seven Irish Republican terrorists imprisoned in the gray concrete H-block cells of Belfast's Maze Prison started to eat again. The end to the long hunger strike came as at least one of the prisoners lay near death, an event that authorities feared would inevitably have sparked a new wave of I.R.A. bombings and shootings throughout Northern Ireland and England...
...willing to meet an agonizing death to establish that we are political prisoners." So saying, seven inmates between the ages of 25 and 32, all of them convicted as Irish Republican terrorists (three for murder), went on a hunger strike on Oct. 27 in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison, 13 miles outside Belfast. As the prisoners passed the 40th day of their fast last week, there were increasing fears that one or more might die. If so, the troubled province could be in for a new round of bloodshed and sectarian violence. In sympathy, three women convicts...
...Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, to grant them the status of political prisoners. Whitelaw, who is now Mrs. Thatcher's Home Secretary, later said the concession had been a mistake. It was withdrawn in 1976, and as a result there is something of a double standard at Maze Prison. Those convicted before that time-some 360 inmates-are segregated in compounds according to their political allegiance and allowed to wear their own clothes, as well as to refuse prison labor and other regimentation. But Protestant and Catholic terrorists convicted of offenses committed after March 1976 are housed...
...years ago, prisoners at Maze began what is now known as the "dirty protest." They refused to wash, shave or wear clothes, wrapped themselves only in their prison blankets and smeared the walls of their cells with excrement. Since then the protest has grown to include 468 men at Maze and 26 women at Armagh...
...Maze Seven have now been moved to separate cells in the medical wing of the prison, where their condition is closely monitored by doctors. For nearly three hours each evening they are allowed to see each other, a privilege not granted other protesting prisoners. Their relatives are also allowed a weekly visit, again an improvement over arrangements for the "blanket-men." But none of the fasting prisoners have touched the food that is routinely prepared and offered, and their spokesmen continue to insist that their demands are nonnegotiable...