A report by an international monitoring group which is expected to be highly critical of the detention conditions of prisoners involved in the 1997 Mountjoy Prison siege will be published shortly.
The prisoners are being held in Portlaoise Prison in a regime which a recent report from the prison's psychological service described as "effectively solitary confinement". One of the men, Mr Eamon Seery, has been on hunger strike for a fortnight in protest at detention conditions, but this week began accepting water.
The report was written by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), an international group which monitors the treatment of prisoners in 40 states which have signed an international convention.
A CPT delegation visited Portlaoise Prison in September, 1998, after human rights groups expressed very serious concerns about the detention conditions of six prisoners who were transferred there after the hostage-taking incident in Mountjoy Prison in 1997.
One of the inmates, Mr Joseph Cooper, has been released on bail since the report was compiled.
The remaining five prisoners include Paul Ward, the man convicted of the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin. Four prison officers were held hostage in Mountjoy Prison for 53 hours in January 1997 after a planned rooftop protest failed. Witnesses reported that the hostages were threatened with strangulation and had blood-filled syringes held to their throats. Some changes were made to the regime of the prisoners after the CPT presented its report to the Government, according to reliable sources.
The last report by the CPT, following a visit in 1993, claimed that some staff in Mountjoy and Limerick prisons had "a propensity to ill-treat prisoners". That report was not published until December 1996 - 18 months after it was sent to the government - despite a request by the CPT that its reports, and the relevant governments' responses to them, be published within six months of them being handed over.