WATCH: Full episodes of Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman online now and tune in for all-new episodes Tuesdays at 10/9c. We’re not here from revenge or to punish you over the hunger strikes, but if you interfere with the escape, you will be dealt with swiftly.” The IRA members then bound the guards, placed pillowcases over their heads and issued a warning: “This is an IRA operation. Within minutes, the IRA took complete control of H-Block 7 from the 24 officers on duty.Īfter confining prison officials to a pair of game rooms, the inmates ordered a dozen of them to remove their uniforms, which they then donned. Everything appeared routine until shortly after 2:30 p.m., when Brendan McFarlane-who had succeeded Sands as the commanding IRA officer inside the Maze-called out “Bumper!” Hearing the pre-arranged codeword, the inmate-orderlies flashed their guns and overpowered the unarmed prison guards.Īs the five orderlies secured the circle, lookouts in a direct line of sight entered each of the block’s four wings and attacked guards with weapons that included a gun, knife, screwdriver and hammer. That afternoon, five IRA prisoners entered the circle of H-Block 7 to carry out their cleaning duties.
READ MORE: Irish Republican Army: Timeline The IRA Prisoners Seized H-Block 7 With Smuggled-In Guns Having decided to stage the breakout on a Sunday-the quietest day of the week with the fewest staff on duty-the IRA leaders set September 25, 1983, as the day for their great escape. After taking control of the H-block at gunpoint, the prisoners planned to hijack a food delivery truck, which they learned was not searched when entering or exiting the prison. Knowing that officers only carried batons for self-defense, the inmates smuggled six handguns with silencers and knives inside the prison, although it’s still not known how. The protest culminated in a 1981 hunger strike in which 10 republican prisoners-including the IRA’s leader in the Maze Prison, Bobby Sands-died.Īn empty prison cell seen inside H-Block 4 wing After the British government stripped convicted paramilitaries of their special status as political prisoners in 1976, IRA inmates wore blankets instead of prison-issued uniforms and refused to shower or empty their chamber pots. These H-Blocks became battlegrounds for IRA prisoners who had waged a violent campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland. Touted as Europe’s most secure penitentiary, the Maze was thought to be escape-proof-that is, until 38 IRA prisoners staged the biggest jailbreak in British history in September 1983.īuilt on a former Royal Air Force Base 10 miles outside Northern Ireland’s capital of Belfast, the maximum-security prison featured eight jail blocks shaped like the capital letter H. During the height of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” in the 1970s and ‘80s, the British government incarcerated hundreds of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) paramilitaries inside the notorious Maze Prison.
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