Provisional Irish Republican Army 1982, reflecting the sequence in which the old leadership of the republican movement were being sidelined. IRA prisoners convicted after March 1976 did not have Special Category Status applied in prison. In response, more than 500 prisoners refused to wear prison clothes. This activity culminated in the 1981 Irish hunger strike, when seven IRA and three Irish National Liberation Army members starved themselves to death in pursuit of political status. The hunger strike leader Bobby Sands and Anti H-Block activist Owen Carron were elected to the British Parliament, and two other protesting prisoners were elected to the Dáil. In addition,
Segovia prison break Following Franco's death in October 1975, the new head of state, king Juan Carlos, signed a partial amnesty. Despite this, over 600 political prisoners remained incarcerated throughout Spain, with a substantial number of them having connections to the Basque separatist group ETA. The previous most successful escape involving ETA prisoners had occurred in December 1969, when 15 political prisoners, including 10 ETA members, had escaped from Basauri prison in Biscay. The Segovia escape would be the largest escape since the Spanish Civil War and the biggest of numerous escape attempts organised by ETA. Those planning to escape learnt from Communist