Where is HMP Whitemoor and which notorious prisoners have been held there?
HMP Whitemoor is a high-security prison that houses around 500 of the most dangerous criminals in the UK.
It hit the headlines in 1994, when six prisoners escaped from the “Special Secure Unit” after smuggling a gun into the prison, although they were all recaptured immediately.
Where is HMP Whitemoor?
HMP Whitemoor is located in the market town of March, Cambridgeshire.
The prison is built on the site of an old railway yard and was opened for use in 1991.
It holds a mixture of category A and B prisoners and only accepts prisoners serving more than four years on their sentences.
The facility has the largest concentration of high-security prisoners than any other jail in the country.
Who has been held at HMP Whitemoor?
HMP Whitemoor has held some of the most dangerous prisoners, here are some of the inmates who have served time there:
Kamel Bourgas
Bourgas is a high-profile terrorist prisoner. The Algerian is serving 17 years for conspiracy to create public nuisance by using poison and explosives in the infamous 2002 terrorist ricin plot.
Dennis Nilsen
Nilsen was a Scottish serial killer who strangled 16 young men in his North London flat between 1978 and 1983.
Mark Fellows
Fellows is serving a full life sentence for murdering Salford’s ‘Mr Big’ Paul Massey.
He was also found guilty of shooting John Kinsella, a friend of Paul Massey’s three years later.
Paul Magee
Magee was a member of the IRA who murdered British and Irish soldiers and policeman. Magee was part of an IRA team known as the M60 gang after the machine gun they carried.
He was captured in May 1980 when SAS soldiers in plain clothes arrived at the house he was in to arrest the gang. Before he was arrested however Magee killed the SAS officer using his machine gun.
While awaiting trial in 1981 Magee and seven other prisoners, including the other members of the M60 gang, took a prison officer hostage at gunpoint.
They dressed up as prison officers and used their hostage to get through the gates of the prison to two cars waiting for them, escaping from the prison.
Magee was recaptured 12 years later and convicted for the murder of a police officer.
Paul Clarke
Clarke and his girlfriend, Lorraine Thorpe, were convicted of the double murder of Thorpe’s father and girlfriend in separate attacks.
Both were sentenced to life in prison and Clarke had served four years of his sentence when he was found dead in his cell in 2010.
What does HMP mean?
HMP is an abbreviation for His/Her Majesty’s Prison.
The oldest surviving correctional facility in the country is the Tower of London.
It was England‘s first national jail and was designed to intimidate the population and led to the creation of the phrase “you will be sent to the tower” which means to be imprisoned or punished.