Prison riot leader: Staff treated me like animal
AN inmate who helped lead the massive Birmingham Prison riot said it happened because he was treated like an “animal”.
Grant Samed said he was denied his antipsychotic medication before the violence which trashed large parts of the jail, causing more than £6 million-worth of damage, in December 2016.
But he said he could not remember exactly what happened because he was “extremely mentally unwell”.
Samed was jailed for six years for his role in the riot which led to the worst prison violence for almost 30 years.
Passing sentence after Samed admitted a charge of prison mutiny, a judge at Birmingham Crown Court said he was among six inmates who were “undoubtedly the instigators” of the trouble.
The court heard that Samed had been unwell the night before but, despite ringing a bell to attract the attention of the authorities, he received no help.
In a letter to prisoners’ magazine Inside Time, Samed, who was identified as Grant S, said he was “not ashamed” to admit he was a ringleader in the riot.
He went on: “The reason I am not ashamed is because they should be ashamed for how they treated me.”
Samed said he was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic with a personality disorder and was now being treated “fairly and humanely” at Ashworth Hospital, a high-security psychiatric unit on Merseyside.
He wrote: “The disturbance arose at Birmingham because I was not being given my anti-psychotic medication on a regular basis. I don’t know the exact events of that day because I was extremely mentally unwell.
“I asked the mental health team for help but was denied it over and over again. The current system is a disaster of all proportions.”
The riot broke out after Samed joined other prisoners on the suicide netting on the top floor of his N wing cell. When a guard came to negotiate, prisoners threatened him with a syringe filled with blood before snatching a set of keys from him.
It ended with 500 prisoners involved in what a judge called “mutiny and mindless destruction.”
During Samed’s trial, his barrister said: “The night before the riots, he was not well and had sought help and rung the bell to attract the attention of the prison services.
“For whatever reason help was not forthcoming and that was the catalyst for his behaviour thereafter.”
In his letter, Samed said: “Since I’ve been at Ashworth, I’ve been medicated correctly and regularly, and treated like a person. Because of this I’ve had no incidents whatsoever in the eight months I’ve been here. I accept that prison staff have been cut by a greedy government, but the staff that have remained seem to have abandoned a positive work ethic.
“I believe they take out their hardships and unhappiness on prisoners. To put it simply, treat us like animals and we will respond like animals.”
Samed has 64 other convictions and at the time of the riot was serving a two-year sentence for burglary and attempted arson on a shop.