More than 400 terrorist prisoners are scheduled for release within the next two years under the Good Friday peace accord.

Waiting for the release of prisoners

The question of what will happen to the prison - unique in Europe for exclusively housing paramilitary prisoners - remains.

The setting of murders - both of prison officers and other inmates - numerous escapes, wrecking sprees, and the hunger strikes of 1981, when 10 republican prisoners starved to death demanding political status, may well finish its days as a museum.

Situated close to Lisburn in County Antrim, the prison started life as a detention centre in the early 1970s when hundreds of men were rounded up and interned without trial.

Known then as Long Kesh, the Maze was originally set up on the site of a World War II airfield.

Political recognition

Population of the facility peaked in 1974 when around 1,800 men were detained in the complex.

It was initially run along the lines of a Prisoner of War camp, segregated according to paramilitary allegiance with military-style command structures.

However, in March 1976 the government ended special category status - which had accorded the prisoners political recognition - and started to treat paramilitary offenders as ordinary criminals.

Bobby Sands: Starved himself to death in 1981

Those convicted of paramilitary crimes were placed in the new cellular complex of eight H-Blocks while the old complex was phased out.

Each block, built at a cost of £1m in the mid-1970s, contains100 cells, four dining rooms, exercise yards and hobbies rooms.

The jail became the focus of intense international scrutiny between 1976 and 1981 when Republican inmates fought for political status, initially through the "blanket" and "dirty" protests.

Their campaign culminated in two hunger strikes.

During the second in 1981, 10 Republicans, led by Bobby Sands, starved themselves to death.

Process of change

The protest was focussed on the removal of special category status and the requirement for prisoners convicted of terrorist crimes to conform to a normal prison regime.

Although no changes were made during the protests, the prison regime has undergone a process of change since the early 1980s.

Prisoners wear their own clothes, are not required to work, and access to visits and letters has increased.

Prisoners have not been into cells since 1994

And since1994 prisoners have not been locked in their cells, except for a short period each day for headcounts.

Despite government assurances that the Maze is the most high-security prison in western Europe, security has been breached numerous times.

As well as individual cases of inmates slipping through the net, groups of prisoners escaped through tunnels twice in the early 1970s.

But the most serious jailbreak was in September 1983 when 38 IRA men escaped in a carefully co-ordinated escape during which a prison officer was murdered.

Over the past year two men have been murdered inside the Maze.

Watchtowers could become museum artefacts

Loyalist Volunteer Force commander Billy Wright was shot dead by the INLA in December as he left his wing to receive a visit.

Months later remand prisoner David Keyes - one of those charged with the murders of a Catholic and Protestant in Poyntzpass - was found murdered in his cell in the LVF wing.

Recent security breaches also include the escape of IRA double-murderer Liam Averill, who walked from the jail dressed as a woman after a Christmas party for prisoners' children.

And in March 1997 a 30ft tunnel was discovered leading from H7, an IRA block.

Former prisoner Gerry Adams

Prison chiefs were further embarrassed when the tonnes of rubble and earth removed by the tunnellers were found in a vacant cell - evidence that the wing had not been checked in months.

HM Maze prison currently houses 473 men, including those responsible for some of the worst terrorist offences of the Troubles.

Maze facts