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A JAILED armed robber was bludgeoned to death with a hammer after an argument with a fellow inmate boiled over in Macau's troubled Coloane Island Prison.

 Police say Ng Tat-cheong, who was jailed for four years in 1998, suffered several hammer blows to the head when a dispute with another inmate exploded in a prison workshop on Friday night.

 Warders administered first aid before Ng was taken to the Conde de Sao Januario Hospital Centre on the Macau peninsula.

 Hospital staff said Ng died of multiple head injuries at about 3am yesterday.

 A prison official said the cause of the quarrel was not clear.

 A senior police source said that a prisoner sentenced in 1995 to a 16-year prison term for murder was being questioned over the hammer attack.

 Late last year, Macau's pre-handover secretary for justice, Jorge Silveira, described the Coloane prison as 'one of the most dangerous in the world' because two-thirds of its inmates were convicted or suspected triad members.

 The jail's most notorious inmate is 'Broken Tooth' Wan Kuok-koi, who was sentenced to 15 years last November for triad leadership and other crimes. He is kept in isolation.

 His top lieutenant, Vong Tat-hou, was returned by the mainland last month to serve a 10.5-year sentence.

 The prison, which houses 700 remand and convicted prisoners, was part of Macau's secretariat for justice until the handover.

 But it now forms part of the portfolio of Secretary for Security Cheong Kuoc-va.



Robber beaten to death in jail