But 23-year-old Keimar Payne, alias "Bag Mouth", denied being a hit-man at the prison before rioting inmates burned it down two years ago.

He also played down the theory of there being a plot to burn down the Station Hill prison, saying the inmates would have been idiots to do so without also planning a mode of escape after any riot.

"I'm not a hit-man," Payne told a Commission of Inquiry at the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex. "I know the picture they have painted of me in the prison. It's an ugly picture and some of the rumours about me are true, but I don't attack the innocent," Payne admitted.

The convicted robber said if threatened, he would satisfy himself through vengeance, but that he had never accepted cigarettes or drugs as payment for attacking other inmates.

He admitted once attacking a fellow inmate with a piece of wood, and bursting his head for calling him a homosexual. "He had disrespected me," Payne told the commission.

"Most people do say I have a very violent nature," the witness added. "If anyone mashed my corns, I would always mash them back."

Regarding the riot on March 29, Payne said he had scoffed at the idea of it being a planned action, and even called inmates "idiots" who were saying if the prison was burnt down they could go home.

"They would have to be idiots to believe they would allow over 900 criminals on the streets of Barbados to create havoc," he testified.

Payne said he saw inmates actually trying to bore a hole in an attempt to escape, but he never moved since he knew what would have been on the outside.

"This was no plan. This was a hot and sweaty thing," Payne concluded.