Larry Marley to come to fruition, he joined the blanket protest in the Maze's H-Blocks for four years. In September 1983, he helped Brendan McFarlane, Bobby Storey and Gerry Kelly to orchestrate the successful mass escape of 38 republican prisoners from the Maze. It was the largest prison escape in British penal history. According to a BBC documentary about the escape, Marley was the mastermind, having come up with the idea with the aim of embarrassing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as the Maze was considered to be one of the world's most secure prisons. Marley, unlike his three co-conspirators, did not
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