His Pale Prisoner

It was like that. All you can do is curl up in a ball and try to weather the storm. He decided there was only one way to survive: After the first time they beat me up badly, I was terrified. But it never happened again, because I could hear a pin drop, a rustle of paper, at a hundred yards. I was like a cat. He decided to take matters into his own hands. When he was granted a home visit to see his father, who was recuperating from a stroke, he slipped away from the two officers sent to guard him; the four of them were in the pub — his father in his wheelchair, the prison staff playing pool — when Massey escaped through a toilet window.

In Spain, Massey lived as a free man for nearly two years. One Christmas we had nephews, nieces, grandnephews, grandnieces — it was wonderful. They began drinking heavily. One day, they were in a bar in Fuengirola and his girlfriend was crying. She went to the ladies to clean herself up. She had to pass these three English guys, who were making comments, pissed.

He was convicted of grievous bodily harm. The British wanted him back, but the Spanish refused to deport him back to a life sentence there is no equivalent in Spain. After a year of legal wrangling, he was returned to the UK. Massey has nothing but praise for the Spanish justice system.

Once a year, they choose a few prisoners out of the whole population and pardon them as a gesture of goodwill. Anything they can do to keep the family together. Massey claims the Spanish agreed to deport him only on the proviso that he could not be returned to a life sentence. They decided they could circumnavigate their constitution by putting a provision in the extradition warrant. They block me at every twist and turn, because if I got it ratified, everybody would get what I got. Massey was finally released from Sudbury prison in Derbyshire to a probation hostel in A few months later, he was told his father was dying in hospital.

When he asked for an extension of his curfew to stay with him, it was refused. He stayed at the hospital anyway, until his father passed away four days later. Massey gave himself up and was sent back to prison. It was another two and a half years before he was granted open conditions again, at Ford prison in Sussex. Then, in May , he discovered his sister, Carol, was terminally ill. Refused permission to visit her in hospital, he walked out of the gates and stayed with her until she died two weeks later. It eventually came 10 months later, and he was returned to jail — this time, the closed, category B Pentonville.

Is Massey as anti-authoritarian as the prison authorities say? I believe in the rule of law, otherwise there would be complete chaos. In June , Massey was told his mother had an aggressive brain tumour and was near death. If he were to reach her in time, this escape had to be more audacious than the previous three. We pay the bill and leave the Breakout.

Massey looks healthier than when we first met him a few years ago. Today, he takes us round the back of the prison to show us how he escaped. A row of terrace houses — staff accommodation — lines one side of the wall. Massey was working in the gym and escaped using netting from a five-a-side goal to make thin but strong rope. Aung San Suu Kyi led her party to a landslide election victory in the country's last general election in , but the junta ignored the result.

She has spent 12 of the last 19 years in detention and remains under house arrest. Earlier this month she won minor concessions from the regime —such as limited deliveries of foreign magazines and better access to her lawyer- by refusing food deliveries. The tactic prompted speculation that she was on hunger strike.

Accessibility links Skip to article Skip to navigation. Wednesday 19 December Burma frees political prisoner after 19 years Burma's longest serving political prisoner has been freed in an amnesty which the military junta called an act of "loving kindness and goodwill".

There are more drugs inside Roumieh than outside! The lack of funds and the neglect inside Lebanese prisons have created a security time bomb that the current Interior Minister, Nouhad Machnouk, decided to defuse by staging a military operation in Roumieh last February. Evidence arose that a terrorist attack staged in the Lebanese city of Tripoli had been masterminded from cell block B of the prison, where Islamist prisoners are held. In addition to the construction of a new prison facility within the grounds of an army barracks, a high security prison is also being built.

That is not a prison policy. The Ministry of the Interior is heading the current penitentiary reform. The funding is provided through an association set up by the Minister himself, which has led to criticism from certain activists who fear the risk of a conflict of interest.

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In , the Lebanese government had decided to hand over the management of prisons to a new penitentiary administration, under the supervision of the Justice Ministry. But this transfer of powers has not yet come into effect. It is a situation open to all kinds of abuses. In June, a video posted on the social media showing prison guards torturing Islamist detainees provoked widespread public outrage.

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News By Emmanuel Haddad. Since then, a far-reaching penitentiary reform programme has been underway.