Trikala Prison (Trikala)

 prison, abandoned / shut down

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An old Turkish building with four-foot thick walls, used today as a closed prison for sententenced inmates and as a preventative detention. About 1/4 of a 150 or so inmates in Trikala are foreigners, and from Athens, awaiting trial there. Many are Albanians, who's brutality is unparalled in Europe, staged a daring escape on May 23, 1995, using weight dumbells to break the locks on the gates and bed springs as a ladderto scale the wall. Twenty-nine prisoners escaped, about half of them never recaptured having absconded to Albania. Prisoners there experience many privations, buiding having primitive toilet facilities and heated by firewood during cold Central-Greece winters. As opposed to modern and rigid Western Detention facilities, in this Greek prison inmates have a good degree of personal freedoms and good treatment from friendly guards. For example, inmates may purchase articles from a local supermarket, mail is not read and no dehumanizing strip searches are conducted.