(BOP) - Twenty-five years ago this week, the Bureau of Prisons resolved a riot at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Talladega, Alabama, without loss of life or serious injury to any of the hostages, inmates, or responding federal officers.
For ten days, from August 21 through August 30, 1991, approximately 120 Cuban detainees armed with homemade weapons held seven Bureau of Prisons staff and three Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) staff hostage. The Cuban detainees, a small portion of the more than 120,000 Cubans who came to the U.S. in 1980 as part of the Mariel boatlift, were being held on a variety of criminal charges. They had exhausted their appeals through the U.S. legal system and were to be returned to Cuba, prompting them to riot. The inmates' demands included, among other things, that they not be returned to Cuba.
Special Operations Response Teams (SORT) from several Bureau locations, approximately 180 FBI agents and a variety of specialized personnel from the Bureau, FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, and INS assisted in resolving the situation at Talladega. Exchanges between the hostage takers and the Bureau and FBI negotiators were limited through the first several days and slowed even further as the situation continued into the sixth and seventh days. On the ninth day, the inmates announced they would begin killing the hostages one by one, if certain interim demands were not met.
Acting Attorney General Barr, and the Directors of the Bureau of Prisons and the FBI, responded immediately. Late on the evening of August 29, Barr gave the order to free the hostages. In the early morning hours of August 30, the Bureau’s SORT team, accompanied by teams from the FBI, entered the building where the hostages were being held, took control of the inmates and rescued the hostages without injury.
The successful rescue of all the hostages at Talladega, and the avoidance of any loss of staff life, are a credit to the great staff from the Bureau of Prisons and sister agencies in the Department of Justice.