Doors closing for last time

at 'unique' prison
(CNN) -- Only the annual standoff at
Drumcree holds as much symbolism of
the years of political and paramilitary
conflict in Northern Ireland as that
evoked by the Maze Prison.

For three decades this imposing

collection of buildings near Lisburn, The Maze: Steeped in symbolism

County Antrim -- 10 miles west of

Belfast -- held some of the paramilitaries' most hardened killers and bombers.

The Maze is to be closed later this year after the mass release of most of its
remaining paramilitary prisoners on July 28 under the terms of the Good Friday
Agreement.

The effects of many of the events that occurred inside the prison reverberated
far beyond the walls of its notorious H-blocks: the so-called dirty protest;
hunger strikes; three mass breakouts; murder and riots (in 1973, the prison was
set on fire and troops called in to restore order).

In 1998, Sir David Ramsbotham, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, summed up

the institution as "unique within the prison system in the United Kingdom, and
probably the world, in that it holds the bulk of the paramilitary prisoners from
all factions who have been convicted, or are awaiting trial, for crimes
committed in the course of a campaign of violence against the State."

He added: "In the eyes of those prisoners, they remain part of the campaign,
and their imprisonment has been the catalyst for a variety of incidents over the
years."

Internment camp

Originally an RAF airfield, the Maze (known locally as Long Kesh), was
opened in 1971 as an internment camp. Five members of the current Northern
Ireland Assembly are former inmates, including Gerry Adams, president of
Sinn Fein, who was interned in the early 1970s, and David Ervine, spokesman
of the Progressive Unionist Party, who served a five-year jail sentence after
being stopped by security forces in a car that contained a bomb. He was
released in 1980.

Dubbed by inmates as the "university of terror," one former republican prisoner

recalled: "We went in bad terrorists and came out good terrorists. We learned
how to strip and handle weapons, how to make booby-trap bombs, how to stand
up to interrogation and, basically, how to be a professional terrorist."

While it once housed 1,700 prisoners, the Maze faces closure following the
controversial early-release programme negotiated as part of the Good Friday
Agreement.

All inmates who were told by the Sentences Review Commission that they
qualified for early release and who served two years or more of their sentence