Prisoners rioting at an Australian prison surrendered yesterday, 24 hours after chasing away guards and climbing to the rooftop to denounce overcrowding and ill treatment at the jail, police said.
Police brokered an agreement with the 39 prisoners in the high-security compound of the Port Augusta Prison, about 320km north of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia.
They made no demands during the standoff but wanted “some recognition that they think there is a problem,” South Australia Police Assistant Commissioner Graeme Barton told reporters.
The riot began on Thursday afternoon after an outdoor recreation session was canceled. Inmates used makeshift weapons to break windows, air conditioners and computers before taking to the roof and hoisting mattresses on which they had written slogans against overcrowding and poor treatment at the prison.
All of the prison staff evacuated the building and there were no injuries.
South Australia Acting Premier Kevin Foley described the rioters as among the “hardest toughened criminals we have.”
He rejected claims by the state opposition and the prison officers’ union that the riot was in response to overcrowding.
“This has nothing to do with overcrowding. We are dealing with people who are not easy people to deal with, people who are in prison for a very, very long time for committing some of the worst crimes against civil society,” he said.
The Department for Correctional Services Web site says the Port Augusta Prison can accommodate 280 inmates; there are 363 inmates in the prison now.
Foley said the operational capacity of the jail was 368 prisoners.
Last May, Foley advocated a policy of “Rack ’em, pack ’em and stack ’em if that keeps our streets safe.”
But prison officers’ union official Peter Christopher said doubling up prisoners in cells was “a volatile mix.”
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS