Ohio Inmates Surrender, Free Hostages : Prison: Officials cheer and embrace the five guards held for 10 days. Questions are raised about origins of uprising, which left eight people dead.

Five prison guards, some with their heads bandaged, walked to freedom amid jubilant pats on their backs late Wednesday night as the 10-day siege of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility ended with the peaceful surrender of 450 rebel inmates.

Shadowy television pictures recorded the men walking without assistance and being greeted by cheers and embraces from state officials supervising the surrender. They later were reported in stable condition at a hospital. The final toll, however, was eight dead--one prison guard and seven prisoners.

The siege ended where it began, in the recreation yard outside L Block, held by inmates since Easter Sunday. The end came even as new questions were being raised about the origins of the inmate uprising.

In fact, documents show that prison authorities knew they were heading for a potentially violent showdown with inmates at least two days before the takeover.

At an emergency staff meeting on Good Friday, April 9, Warden Arthur Tate Jr. discussed with some of his top aides what was supposed to be a secret plan to force 168 reluctant inmates to submit to tuberculosis screening tests. Among those were 43 Muslim inmates who refused on religious grounds.

“May have to use force,” wrote one of the prison aides in notes that were first disclosed by the Portsmouth Daily Times and later reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

The three-page handwritten document also noted that Tate planned to bolster security with 30 extra state troopers and to put the prison in lock-down when the tests were to be administered, voluntarily or not, the following Monday.

And in a further indication of anticipated conflict, the note said: “Muslims have been informed (about prison insistence on the medical screening tests) and have stated staff do what they have to do and Muslims do what they have to do.”

On Easter, April 11, the siege began with a recreation yard brawl that is widely suspected to have been staged.

Why the tuberculosis issue might have had such a dramatic influence remains unclear, but in an agreement with the inmates Wednesday night, Tate agreed to consult the Ohio Department of Health before taking further steps on the tests.

It was one of 21 points of agreement formally offered by the warden in negotiating a conclusion to the long stalemate. Tate also pledged to review unpopular policies regarding integrated cells, visitation rules and mail privileges.

No concessions were made, however, granting amnesty to those involved in the violence that left the eight dead and more than a dozen others, including some of the guards, injured.

A key figure in the final negotiations was Cleveland lawyer Niki Z. Schwartz, who acted as a legal adviser to the prisoners after being flown here three days ago by state officials. The noted prisoner-rights advocate said inmates understood that there would be no immunity from prosecution for those involved in the murders.

“They expect not to be victims of unlawful retaliation,” he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio echoed that concern Wednesday, calling on Gov. George V. Voinovich to order steps to reduce chances of reprisals by prison guards.

Christine Link, executive director of the state ACLU, recommended that about 50 guards assigned to L Block be given immediate, paid medical furloughs as “a mechanism for everyone to cool off.”

She also called for a prisoner swap with neighboring states to transfer some of the Lucasville troublemakers and to “remove some inmates who might be special targets of reprisal.”

Notably absent from the 21-point response to inmate demands was a response to demands that the warden step down. Also missing were references to Muslim demands to wear distinctive religious garb, carry prayer beads and obtain kosher meals.

The Muslims were leaders in protesting the TB tests, and the prison aide’s notes said officials knew that “may present a problem.”

When the prison riot erupted, it was the Black Muslims, in an unlikely alliance with the white supremacist group Aryan Brotherhood, who apparently led the long holdout. Muslims in traditional robes were among the last inmates to surrender.

Representatives of each organization made separate broadcast appearances as radio and television became a part of the negotiating process. Last Thursday, a country-music station in nearby Portsmouth, WPAY, aired a 15-minute live monologue by a white supremacist who identified himself as “Inmate George.” Last Friday, WBNS, a Columbus television station, broadcast statements by a Black Muslim prisoner.

One hostage, James Anthony Demons, made statements under duress on the air that he had converted to Islam. His captors had told him another hostage would die unless he did so, Demons’ attorney, James H. Banks, said Wednesday.

Cincinnati television station WLWT kept a satellite truck on standby for three days to show the surrender process as it unfolded. The prisoners demanded a live broadcast because they worried that authorities might otherwise hurt them.

Finally, after hopes had soared and sagged many times every day, the word came. It was time for the truck to go in.

Last-minute snags developed this time too. Prisoners said shortly before 4 p.m. that they were ready to send out the injured among them, but then held back, angry and fearful over the closeness of the National Guard and state troopers.

Authorities retreated. Thirty minutes later, seven men were carried out on stretchers by healthy inmates, who then returned to the cellblock. Others limped out, one on a walker, past a phalanx of heavily armed state troopers in black jumpsuits.

The wounded were escorted by National Guardsmen wearing surgical masks and rubber gloves.

At 5:45 p.m., the first group of 20 came out of L Block’s red door into the chill, drizzly air. Clad in white or blue T-shirts and blue prison pants, each placed his hands behind his head and moved underneath a basketball hoop for plastic handcuffs and a search.

It had all begun with the brawl about 3:15 p.m. on Easter Sunday. Reginald Wilkinson, the director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, has said previously that the fight may have been staged.

Neighbors heard on a scanner: “They’ve got the keys! They’ve got the keys! Officer down!”

Demons, the guard released Friday, said in an interview that he was surrounded by half a dozen inmates. He attempted to wrestle free, he said, but they handcuffed him. With their faces covered by T-shirts, they led him down a corridor and locked him in a cell.

Blindfolded and bound with duct tape, he was dressed in inmate clothing and moved constantly. Sometimes he was alone, sometimes with other hostages.

Prison authorities were monitoring conversations through listening devices in tunnels underneath the cellblock but could not tell for sure where the hostages were at any given time, a state official said. That lack of information, the official said, prevented force from being used to end the crisis.

The inmates were heavily armed with knives, shanks and possibly even grenades, Demons said. An assault by the state would have meant certain death for the hostages, he said.

He did blame the state, however, for the one hostage death, that of Robert Vallandingham, 40.

Electricity, water and food shipments had been cut off and desperate inmates hung a banner out a window April 14, saying they would kill a hostage if their demands were not met within 3 1/2 hours.

A prison spokeswoman made light of the warning, calling it “a standard threat” and saying inmate demands were “self-serving and petty.”

Demons said he and Vallandingham heard a radio broadcast of the spokeswoman’s statements. Shortly afterward, Vallandingham was moved.

Vallandingham’s body was discovered Thursday. The cause of death was strangulation, the local coroner said.

Six inmates’ bodies were also released early in the siege. A seventh prisoner was found dead outside another cellblock that had not been taken over.

Demons said they were killed “because they were snitches.” Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), until recently a psychologist at the prison, said the inmate victims that he knew were among the most vulnerable at Lucasville. One, he said, needed a walker to get around.

Demons said the Muslims later lifted his blindfold to show him that they had locked other potential victims in cells for their own safety.

Times researcher Tracy Shryer contributed to this story.