Zacarias Moussaoui – sentenced to life in prison Thursday by a judge for his role in the Sept. 11, 201, attacks – will likely soon have some new neighbors: The most evil convicts in the United States.
Moussaoui is expected to live out the rest of his days at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, aka "Supermax," in Florence, Colo.
The facility, located in the desert about 90 miles south of Denver and designed to be tightly controlled and impossible to escape, houses about 400 prisoners.
Officials won’t confirm if Moussaoui will serve his six life terms at the facility 90 miles south of Denver until after he’s arrived at the prison and has gone through a series of observational interviews and examinations to determine his physical and psychological status.
He then will be placed in a 7-by-12-foot cell where he will be confined for 23 hours a day. Inside the cell is a concrete bed, stool and desk as well as a toilet and a shower. A small slatted window allows some natural light.
For one hour each day, he will have a “recreation” period but still will be in chains and isolated.
"These guys will never be out of their cells, much less in the yard or anywhere around here," Russ Martin, the project manager for the Florence prison, told an interviewer.
Each cell is monitored by video surveillance and considered to provide a very isolated existence for anyone sentenced there. One convicted gang leader told a judge after being sentenced there: “You are sentencing me to die a little each day.”
Other Supermax residents include:
· Richard Reid, the “Shoe Bomber," was convicted of trying to blow up a plane en route from Miami to Paris soon after the Sept. 11 attacks.
· Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber”
· Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator
· Eric Rudolph, who was convicted for bombing abortion clinics
· Ramzi Yousef, Al Qaeda terrorist convicted of planning the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
James Aiken, a former U.S. federal prison official and now a consultant, said during the Moussaoui trial that the convicted terrorist would "rot" at the Florence facility.
"They are in a security envelope, a security bubble. Their environment is sterile, they are isolated from the outside world and from the prison world," said Aiken, who gave evidence for the defense's case against the death penalty for the defendant.
"If a prisoner has a heart-attack, security protocol has to be followed before that lock may be opened and medical personnel can come in," Aiken explained.
"He doesn't know yet, but under such conditions," Aiken warned, "as time goes by they rot."
FOX News' Alicia Acuna and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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