A senior man is homeless after months in jail having been forcibly removed by police from the former prison service headquarters, near Hamilton.James Dallas, 70, insisted that he had a family claim to the vacant building on Happy Valley Road, in Pembroke, and that police had no right to arrest him after a seven-hour stand-off in March.He said: “They locked me up for eight months and when I came out, I had no place to stay. “I’ve been staying with friends and sleeping in a car.” Mr Dallas pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court last month to four charges of throwing a corrosive fluid at officers with intent to resist arrest, as well as trespassing and using threatening language. He was released on bail for sentence in February. He was also ordered to keep away from the derelict building.The siege ended after a seven-hour stand-off on March 28 when a dozen police officers stormed the building. Mr Dallas threw what police said was a corrosive substance at officers who had tried to convince him to leave.There was a similar confrontation in November 2017 after Mr Dallas claimed he had a right to the building because it was built by his grandparents on land they owned. Mr Dallas said: “I didn’t move back into the building until 2008. I have a personal place in the back that my people built.”The prison service headquarters were moved to Dockyard in 2012, but Mr Dallas said he had lived in the building’s basement for several years without being noticed.He added that after the prison service moved he “looked after the place myself”.Mr Dallas said: “The place was run down and I was looking after it.”He claimed that police had taken some of his personal effects from the building and that he had other possessions there that he was unable to reclaim.Mr Dallas said: “They’ve boarded the place up and told me I can’t go there. I just want to get my things.”Cleveland Simmons, a community activist who lives on Happy Valley Road, said: “He is level headed. He has kept the grounds and looked after the place and now he is tired and disgusted and does not see a way out for himself.” Mr Simmons added: “I am trying to get permission for him to at least go to the premises to pick up some of his stuff.”He said he hoped that Mr Dallas would eventually be able to prove his case.Mr Simmons said: “I don’t think the Government has any paperwork behind that building. Who was it leased from?“I have done some surveying and I have not been able to find anything relating to that.”