It has been confirmed that Turloch McAllister has been beaten by a number of screws in Maghaberry. He is now back in his cell.  His furniture is a wet mattress and his clothing is a T-shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. The screws have removed everything else. 

`Jim McAllister, Turloch’s father, has expressed his concern at the regime his son and other republican prisoners are forced to undergo.  In his view, very little is required in order to remedy the situation. That nothing is being done leads Jim McAllister to believe that some sinister agenda on the part of prison management is holding back progress.

Writing in 'the Pensive quill' former republican prisoner Anthony McIntyre stated:

"Harry Fitzsimmons and Turloch McAllister are the names of republican political prisoners we are hearing about today. Their names could just as easily be Kieran Nugent or Raymond McCartney; men who faced the same vindictive regime and all the brutality it could muster in a different time but for the same reason.

"These men cannot be allowed to be swallowed up in the jaws of the Maghaberry machine where their plight is smothered by public indifference and a regime of silence. We, former republican prisoners, who experienced the British jailers and know their callous penchant for bullying and brutality, can hardly sit indifferent to what is going on behind the walls. We were supposed to have sorted these matters out once and for all. If we don’t stop it then the value of our efforts so many years ago is called into question.

"There is one way to protect the integrity of our own prison struggle. That is by extending the benefits it produced to the prisoners who followed in our footsteps. Maghaberry’s brutal screws must be stopped in their tracks. Nothing less will do."