(Prisoners on top of HMP Peterhead during the riot in 1987, ended violently by SAS (Special Air Squadron, Anti-Terror Police) called in, after 5 days of siege, by prime minister Margaret Thatcher.)
A riot involving inmates in a residential area of a prison has ended following intervention by police & prison officers.
It is understood some inmates had been refusing to leave an area of HMP and Young Offenders Institute Grampian in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire.
The incident started in a corridor in the prison’s Ellon Hall and continued in the gated unit overnight.
Prison officers quickly sealed off the area after prisoners refused to go to their cells and started vandalising furniture.
Police were called to the scene in the prison’s Ellon Hall at around 8.50pm Tuesday night, the riot was over by 11.30am yesterday.
Ellon Hall accommodates around 50 people but it is not known how many inmates were active participants in the incident.
HMP Grampian, the £140 million state-run facility, opened in March this year to replace the former HMP Aberdeen and Peterhead.
The new ‘super’ prison has the capacity for about 500 inmates including adult males, young offenders and female prisoners.
Peterhead jail was closed in December last year and Craiginches in February of this year with inmates transferred to other facilities until the new prison was ready.
HMP Peterhead, one of the prisons HMP Grampian replaced, is infamous for being the site of an brutal SAS raid to put down a riot in 1987.
Last month two prisoners confined themselves to part of the same residential wing and refused to move out in a two-hour stand off.
Prison officers were forced to wear body armour as a precaution during negotiations, although no-one was hurt.
SPS confirmed that fire and ambulance were also in attendance at the incident as a precaution and matter of protocol.
Since the riot 41 inmates who trashed part of the new North-east jail are to be moved to a prison in the Central Belt.
The damage caused during the 13-hour incident with police and prison workers at HMP Grampian was so extensive inmates cannot return until repairs are carried out.
Inmates from the Ellon hall, where the incident occurred, are moving to Barlinnie on the outskirts of Glasgow, which has the highest capacity in Scotland.
The Scottish Prison Service today confirmed 41 prisoners were being questioned in relation to the incident at the new Peterhead prison.
Solidarity to the prisoners from HMP Grampian!
Keep the fire in the prisons going!
http://inthebellyofthebeast.noblogs.org/post/2014/05/15/again-hmp-grampian-police-called-in-as-riot-broke-out/#more-436