Robert Pickett moved from Addiewell prison

The prison has seen a series of violent attacks on staff, drugs raids on warders’ homes, the attempted murder of a senior officer, as well as tit-for-tat spats between prisoners.

Although there is no evidence directly incriminating Robert Pickett, a senior member of the Lyons crime family, he has been fingered by Scottish Prison bosses as an orchestrator of what one insider called “the uprising”. He has now been moved to Kilmarnock prison at Bowhouse and is believed to be in the segregation wing to keep him away from other offenders.

The Lyons, from Possilpark in Glasgow, have been feuding with the rival Daniel gang for decades. It has seen murders, woundings, shootings and stabbings. In May, Pickett and five other gang members were sentenced to a total of 104 years for a campaign of attempted murder. Pickett was given 16 years, for the brutal attacks and what the judge, Lord Mulholland, described as turning the city into a “war zone”.

The six Lyons’ hoods targeted five of the Daniel clan – Robert Daniel, Thomas Bilsland, Gary Petty, Ryan Fitzsimmons and Steven Daniel – between June 2016 and September 2017 in Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and Manchester. The “sophisticated” murder attempts involved high-tech tracker devices and encrypted mobile phones.

In a high-speed car chase across north Glasgow, Steven “Bonzo” Daniel’s car was forced into an off-ramp of the M8 where he was attacked with a cleaver and a hammer. His nose was almost severed and his facial injuries were so severe that police initially thought he had been shot at close range.

At the trial of the six, “Bonzo” told the trial that he was not aware of a feud between the Lyons and Daniel families, to which Lord Mulholland later commented: “I did not believe a word and, more importantly, neither did the jury.”

Pickett – known by his rather comical nom de guerre “Piggy” – first surfaced in Paisley in the late 1980s as a member of the security firm FCB. The company, which was set up with public money and was meant to provide jobs for local people, was controlled by hoods and became a honeypot for a gang led by Stewart “Specky” Boyd who, behind the uniforms, were extorting protection money and selling drugs.

They controlled the turf and brooked no competition. Mark Rennie, a 26-year-old drug addict, probably didn’t think he was. To feed his habit he had borrowed £40 from moneylender Boyd and attempted to turn this over by small-time dealing. He didn’t make the repayments which quickly spiralled, so that he was owing hundreds, thousands, of pounds.

In November 1995, Boyd sent three of his team to warn off Rennie or to make him pay. The three wearing FCB jackets who turned up at his doorstep were George “Goofy” Docherty, “Piggy”’ Pickett and Stewart Gillespie. Gillespie, who was in charge, handed a gun to Pickett and told him, “shoot the fat b******”. Piggy clicked the trigger of the shotgun but it didn’t fire, so Docherty weighed in with a machete.

Rennie recovered and tried to get his own back, vandalising the cars of Gillespie and his brother. Days later, while running away he was shot in the back. He died instantly. Stewart Gillespie was the gunman. He was sentenced to 25 years, and Pickett to 12 years for attempted murder.

Pickett is the only surviving member of the three – the other two were murdered. Gillespie, who had joined the Lyons gang with Pickett, was knocked down by a car in 2006, repeatedly stabbed and left to die in a street in Tollcross.

In December 2006, a scene which could have come from the Godfather played out in Glasgow. Two masked Daniel gunmen wearing long coats and carrying handguns turned up at Applerow Motors in the Lambhill area of Glasgow, owned by the Lyons. They were hitmen Raymond Anderson and James McDonald, who liked to call themselves The Untouchables. In a hail of bullets, Pickett and Steven Lyons were wounded but Steven’s cousin Michael Lyons, 21, died in the attack.

Pickett smirked in the dock at the two Daniel members who were eventually convicted, despite him claiming they were the wrong men. He described how he was shot three times. He was in a coma for three weeks and had to have a kidney removed. When he was asked why the original statement he had given to police had changed – from one gunman to two, from fat to thin – he said he was still on morphine when he talked initially.

The two attackers were sentenced to a minimum term of 35 years and McDonald had a further year added to it three years ago when he was convicted of a savage prison attack.

When he was sentenced in May for his part in the Lyons’ gang attack Pickett was sent to Addiewell. The private prison has been plagued with problems. In April, jail manager Marcus Whitehead, the son of the governor, was suspended over bullying claims. A year previously one prisoner was able to roam the jail for eight hours when his cell door was left unlocked.

Also in April this year, three wardens’ homes in Armadale, Hamilton and Shotts were raided by 50 police officers over what a spokesman called “contraband items being brought into the prison”. It is understood that both legal and illegal drugs were recovered from various locations.

Last month, four warders were attacked by a prisoner in the notorious Forth B wing, just days after their boss, unit manager Gary Chambers, narrowly avoided being killed when he was shot at outside his home in Bearsden as he left for work at 5.30am in the morning. Two shots were fired and a glass panel near Chambers’ front door was shattered.

A suspected getaway car was discovered burned out hours later in Glasgow’s Port Dundas area, just yards from where “Bonzo” Daniel was brutally attacked and left scarred for life.

The Scottish Prison Service does not comment on prisoners or their whereabouts. Nevertheless, Pickett is now in Kilmarnock prison, run by Serco, which has not been free from problems. Serious assaults inside the prison soared fivefold in the year to March 31.