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  Sounds like cruel and unsual punishment to me. 23 hours a day locked in a cage for the rest of your life! Original Article


Supermax prison will be no pleasure for terrorist

Robert Weller
Associated Press
May. 5, 2006 12:00 AM

DENVER - Zacarias Moussaoui is expected to be shipped to the "Alcatraz of the Rockies" to serve out a life term for his role in the Sept. 11 attacks, but he won't have much of a view.

At the Supermax federal prison in southern Colorado, he will spend 23 hours a day in his cell and have little to no contact with other notorious criminals, including Ramzi Yousef, Eric Rudolph, Ted Kaczynski and Terry Nichols on "bombers row." Or Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber he said was to help him fly a fifth plane into the White House.

Even when allowed outside in the high-walled recreation yard, Moussaoui will "see the sky but not the mountains or other terrain," former Warden Robert Hood said.

Still, Moussaoui will be afforded religious rights as a Muslim and probably a special diet if he behaves. Inmates at the prison also are allowed telephone calls and visitors if they don't act up, though most communications at the nation's most secure federal prison are monitored, Hood said phone privileges could be as little as 15 minutes a month.

Carla Wilson, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons in Washington, would not confirm that Moussaoui will be a Supermax inmate.

Still, she noted the prison 90 miles southwest of Denver is designed for people like him.

The $60 million Supermax, formally called Administrative Maximum, was built in 1995 in Florence, a town of 3,600 people.