UPDATE: Police have arrested a man who allegedly threatened to detonate a makeshift bomb and set himself on fire at the maximum-security Barwon Prison.
The 44-year-old inmate allegedly threatened to detonate the makeshift bomb, believed to be made of ground match heads, about 9.30am.
He also draped himself in an Irish Republican Army flag, according to Fairfax Radio 3AW.
The tense stand-off lasted just over two hours, before the man surrendered.
“He has been taken into custody without incident or injury,” police spokeswoman Natalie Webster said.
It is believed the man was isolated in an exercise yard at the Lara prison, near Geelong, and arrested shortly after 11.30am.
The prisoner is believed to have been housed in the Banksia unit.
It is believed that he made the threats over a personal matter, and not as a protest against prison conditions.
Inmates are provided with matches, but Corrections Victoria is in the process of transitioning to smoke-free prisons. Prisons are expected to be smoke-free by next July.
It is the second time in less than eight months that an explosive consisting of ground match heads has been found at Victoria’s highest-security prison.
In July, prison officers were searching an unoccupied cell when a minor explosion occurred.
The ground match heads had been in the luggage of an inmate who was being transferred to Port Phillip Prison.
This story first appeared in The Age
