A prisoner who staged a six-hour rooftop siege over his hatred of tuna has been ordered to carry out 150 hours unpaid work in the community.
Graham Evans clambered into the rafters at maximum security Perth Prison in protest at being served fish for lunch every second day in the jail.
Evans, who demanded a kosher diet in prison, told prison staff he did not like fish and was fed-up being served it on such a frequent basis.
He complained that he was "starving" because of the regime and spent more than six hours staging a protest in the rafters within the jail's B-Hall.
The fussy inmate stayed in the roof space for a large part of the night and caused hundreds of pounds worth of damage by throwing chunks of plasterboard to the ground.
Other prisoners had to be locked in their cells while trained negotiators were called to try and talk Evans down.
The demonstration began at around 8.30pm on 5 July 2019 and continued until 3am the next day. The 43-year-old eventually agreed to climb down when jail staff brought him a ladder.
Evans, of Queensferry Road, Rosyth, admitted a charge of malicious mischief when he appeared before Sheriff Gillian Wade at Perth Sheriff Court.
He tendered a guilty plea midway through his trial, and after prison officer Annette McGarvie, 42, said she was called at home to come in and help with negotiations.
"The roof at B-hall is quite high and I could see him sitting on one of the crossbars," she said. "He was picking at a hole in the plaster of the ceiling and it fell away."
"He just kept picking at it. He made a hole in the ceiling and it was getting significantly bigger. He had taken a bag of provisions with him and he had a big bottle of juice.
"I wondered if he would need to come down and use the toilet but he didn't."
Asked why Evans was up in the rafters, Ms McGarvie said: "It was to do with his kosher diet. He had been served a lot of fish, and he doesn't like fish.
"And he didn't like the way that his complaints had been dealt with."
The court heard the Scottish Prison Service spent nearly £400 repairing the damage. More cash was spent installing "climbing restrictors" to prevent other inmates from doing the same thing.
Solicitor David Holmes, defending, said his client was "effectively starving in the prison because he didn’t like fish." The court heard he was served only tuna and cheese on alternate lunchtimes.
Mr Holmes said: "Mr Evans was studying the Jewish faith at the time and had asked for a diet consistent with that. He was served tuna every second day, but he won't eat fish. He just doesn't like it.
"No matter who he asked about this, he always got the same response. He was getting hungrier and hungrier and more and more upset.
"He felt that people weren't taking him seriously and said that day that he would go up into the roof space unless something was done. Obviously, things got out of hand."
Evans, who was released two weeks after his protest, has stayed out of trouble since, the court heard.
He was jailed for four months in May 2019, after he painted a sign on his door that stated: "Islam is questionable."
He then carried out a dirty protest in his cell at Dunfermline police station.
Evans was originally charged with breach of the peace over the sign but was found not guilty after trial.
He was, however, jailed for the in-cell protest, in which he smeared excrement over the walls.
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