The lack of medical personnel at the prison in that moment made it impossible to sedate the inmate and activate the medical isolation protocol. The inmate finally gave up due to exhaustion in the early hours of the morning.
At 8am on Thursday, coinciding with the daily prisoner count, the inmate resumed his explicit threats against the staff, warning that he would "cause trouble" again.
The final trigger came during breakfast, after he received his standard cleaning utensils. The prisoner refused to hand back the handles, barricaded himself in and began smashing up his cell. According to sources, he even tried to set fire to his mattress.
Given the imminent risk to the security of the prison and the inmate's own safety, the staff equipped themselves with protective suits and regulation shields to proceed with a forceful entry. However, the inmate allegedly entered the cellblock corridor and violently attacked them.
The officers managed to restrain, handcuff and take him to a cell under video surveillance for temporary isolation. Despite the restraint measures, the inmate's aggressive behaviour did not subside.
He continued to break things in the new cell and make extremely serious death threats, directed especially at one officer in particular. "I'll have to kill you," he repeated.
In a subsequent attempt to calm the situation, when the officers were preparing to remove his handcuffs after observing that he had calmed down, the inmate again became extremely violent. In the struggle, he bit one of the staff members and kicked another.
The serious disturbance of public order continued uninterrupted until after 1pm, at which point the prison officers requested an intervention by the Guardia Civil.
According to sources, the transfer out of Archidona prison was also not peaceful. The inmate put up strong resistance, attempting to headbutt the officers escorting him and violently refusing to get into the prison van.
The TAMPM union has once again spoken out after the incident, highlighting what it describes as the "vulnerability" prison officers face on a daily basis. The same sources strongly criticise the prison authorities for failing to provide "any meaningful support or effective legal and material tools" to deal with such highly disruptive inmates, forcing staff to "risk their physical integrity and even their lives" to maintain order inside the prison.
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