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IRA Prisoner Escapes Ulster Jail in Drag
By Deric Henderson, PA News.
Contributed by Elizabeth Parker
An angry mother wept tonight after her son's IRA killer escaped from
Ulster's top security Maze Prison dressed as a woman.
Liam Averill, 32, fled during a Christmas party for republicans, their
wives and families.
A tearful Mrs Frances Smith said: "He should never be allowed to see
daylight again."
Averill, from Maghera, south Derry, was one of a number of IRA gunmen who
shot dead her 40-year-old son Alan, a former UDR soldier, and another
Protestant John McCloy in the village of Garvagh in April l994. They were hit
by up to 30 bullets as they sat talking in parked cars in the village's Main
Street.
Averill was arrested at a police checkpoint soon afterwards when gloves,
balaclavas and spent cartridges were found in his car.
On Wednesday he walked away in disguise for 600 yards without being
checked before disappearing through the Maze exit gates and into a
visitors' car park.
A furious Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam ordered an immediate
investigation. "This was an appalling lapse in security," she said.
Police chiefs fear Averill was over the border and into the Irish
Republic within hours of his freedom dash, but as he lay low tonight
grieving mother Mrs Smith said there should be no hiding place for him in the
north or south.
This latest escape from the Maze just hours before Prime Minister Tony
Blair's Downing Street meeting with Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams left
prison authorities deeply embarrassed.
The regime had apparently been tightened up after a failed mass breakout
by IRA men earlier this year when a tunnel was found, but serious questions
over another security breakdown remained unanswered tonight.
Averill is thought to have been missing for at least two hours before
staff even realised he had disappeared from H-Block 8 and the escape was only
confirmed after an IRA commander asked shocked officers to carry out a head
count.
Mrs Smith added: "I don't know this man. I've never met him. I don't want
to see him, but after what he did to my son he should never be free again."
Women's clothes had been smuggled into the jail for Averill to use. As
wives and children mingled with republican prisoners at the Christmas party
he managed to slip away and dress.
Before his hugely symbolic meeting at No 10 the Sinn Fein president, who
once tried to escape from the Maze when he was held there over 25 years ago,
rubbed salt into the Government's wounds.
He said: "While there are prisoners, there will be prisoners who try to
escape. I tried it myself. Liam Averill succeeded where I didn't. Good luck
to him."
As the authorities confirmed arrangements for l0 days of Christmas
parole for 160 loyalist and republican convicts, senior prison staff who
claimed paramilitaries on all sides effectively control the day-to-day
running of the jail called for a full independent judicial inquiry.
Ulster Unionists were outraged by the escape. MP Ken Maginnis said:
"This was meticulously planned. It must have involved dozens of people. It's
a further humiliation for the Government."
Ms Mowlam later announced the inquiry into the escape would be headed by
Martin Narey, head of security and policy at the Prison Service in London.
He will look at procedures used to control the movement of prisoners
outside the H blocks and the control of visitors to the prison.
He will report back to the Secretary of State.
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