Reuters:Turkish troops crush defiant last jail, 26 dead

Turkish troops crush defiant last jail, 26 dead
By Steve Bryant

  
ISTANBUL, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Turkish troops shot dead leftist inmates who set 
themselves ablaze and charged them during raids that on Friday subdued the 
last prison to defy a nationwide jail crackdown. 

The government, announcing the end of resistance at the Umraniye jail in 
Istanbul, said four deaths at the prison brought to 26 the number of people 
who had died since Tuesday in confrontations in 20 prisons. 

Hundreds of inmates who had been on hunger strike in jails across the country 
had barricaded themselves in and battled with a crude assortment of makeshift 
but vicious weapons, including flame-throwers, before being crushed. 

Umraniye jail was the last to hold out against the crackdown by authorities 
determined to end a system of large dormitories, into which prison officials 
had not dared enter for a decade, and replace them with small cells. 

"Operation Return to Life is essentially over," Justice Minister Hikmet Sami 
Turk said. "Resistance ended about 30 minutes ago at Umraniye...All convicts 
and detainees have surrendered. 

"Four people died (at Umraniye), including those who were shot after they 
poured petrol on themselves and ran towards security forces on fire," he told 
reporters in Ankara. 

Television channels showed footage shot by troops of burning prisoners 
stumbling out of the rubble of the northern Bartin prison towards waiting 
phalanxes of police in body armour. 

Some tore off jackets and shirts as their hair blazed. 

The film, shot earlier in the four-day operation, indicated troops had used 
bulldozers to demolish a prison wall to reach inmates barricaded inside. They 
were shown beating and kicking the prisoners as they dragged them from the 
prison. 

Black smoke rose from the Umraniye complex on Friday morning as troops, 
backed by bulldozers, surrounded the jail. 

TEARGAS AND LOUDSPEAKER CALLS 

They fired a barrage of teargas at the defiant leftist inmates, and bombarded 
them with loudspeaker calls to surrender. 

Before the final storming of the prison, security forces ripped tiles from 
the roofs of several of the prison blocks, to provide holes to enter the jail 
which stand isolated on a bleak and snowy hilltop on the eastern outskirts of 
Istanbul. 

When it was over, witnesses at Istanbul's Haydarpasa hospital said 18 
ambulances carrying more than 30 men and women from Umraniye jail had drawn 
up outside the emergency wing. 

Most of the convicts were walking but a few came in on stretchers. "Long live 
our death fasts!" some shouted as they entered. 

Journalists were allowed into Istanbul's Bayrampasa prison, where at least 12 
prisoners died early in the crackdown. On one wall of the dormitory block 
housing leftist inmates was painted the slogan "A history written in blood 
cannot be erased." 

In one ward, fires had scorched the paint from 50 bunk beds. 

Officials displayed an arsenal of home-made weaponry they said the prisoners 
had used, including flame-throwers made from kitchen gas canisters, 
crossbows, makeshift rifles, swords and home-made gas masks. 

Other possessions included vast stacks of leftist newspapers and journals and 
a ramshackle printing press. 

The crackdown on 20 prisons nationwide was launched on Tuesday to end hunger 
strikes and establish closer state control of unruly prisons with a sweeping 
reform programme. 

Turkey now hopes to use small cells in place of a system of large dormitories 
that were often controlled by gangs of criminal, leftist, Kurdish or Islamist 
inmates who used mobile phones to organise coordinated protests. 

Turk said 24 inmates and two paramilitary police officers had now died since 
Tuesday. "Our duty now is to make the physical and legal changes to ensure 
that such a thing never happens again," he said. 

The minister said the operation had been carried out "with the minimum 
possible losses." 

Reaction from Turkey's western allies, who have long pushed for jail reform, 
was muted. Turkish groups, however, staged brief protests in many major 
European cities and across Turkey. 

The protesters began hunger strikes more than two months ago against the 
plans to move them from large wards to small cells, which they say will 
expose them to abuse by jailers. 

Human rights groups say the raids have failed to end the hunger strikes, 
during which some prisoners have consumed nothing but sugared water for over 
60 days. 

Officials acknowledged that many of the 800 inmates taken to hospital or 
moved to other jails after their prisons were raided were still refusing 
food. 

Turkey's president on Thursday bowed to pressure from within the government 
and approved a controversial amnesty that may halve the prison population, 
freeing common criminals but leaving many political prisoners behind bars. 

The releases began late on Friday from some jails. 

"Freedom and life outside jail are beautiful," Anatolian news agency quoted 
42-year-old Huseyin Bayrak as saying. He had served three and a half years 
for assault with a firearm.