21 said injured in prison riot

THE police and prison officers yesterday foiled an escape bid by rioting inmates at the high-security Horizon Adult Remand Centre in Kingston, but 21 inmates were injured in the incident.

Police with riot gear and Jamaica Defence Force soldiers had to be called in to help restore calm at the prison.

In the meantime, Major Richard Reese, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Security, last night denied a radio report that two inmates were shot and killed at the facility during the disturbance.

"...There was a small incident but I have no reports of anyone being killed," Reese told the Observer.

The Constabulary Communication Network (CCN), the police's information arm, meanwhile, said there may have been shooting at the prison, but said they could not confirm any deaths.

"The inmates tried to dig off the locks to their cells but they were unsuccessful and calm has been restored," an officer at the CCN said.

However, last night, a security ministry official said that 21 inmates were injured. Some had cracked skulls and others received cuts, the official said,

Sources told the Observer that the prisoners became boisterous because of a lack of water at the facility. The situation, the source said, worsened when warders disallowed visitors from taking bottled water to their relatives and friends inside the prison.

The action sparked a protest from some of the women who claimed that the inmates were being victimised and their constitutional rights were being violated.

"Five day now them can't get no drinking water and them nah bathe; dem a human being," said one of the women. "Is pure diarrhoea inside there now," the woman alleged.

The Department of Correctional Services, however, refuted the claim and said two truckloads of water were delivered to the institution.

Yesterday, an officer on the scene told the Observer that the protest was organised by a woman who had ties to an inmate who is being housed among several other high-risk prisoners.

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