Few will make it out alive. A very strict and constant presence reserved only for the most dangerous people in the world.
But starting today, the largest US prison administration is ready to receive the latest convicted British inmates.ISISBeatle member El Shafi El Sheikh
After refusing a plea bargain, his Elsheikh, 34, says what's inside "Alcatraz in the Rocky Mountains" After ten years of imprisonment, the sentence was handed down today.
US prosecutors say his Islamic State terrorist organization in Iraq and Syria is responsible for the deaths of dozens of aid workers and journalists.
In April, a jury in Alexandria, Virginia, found him guilty of hostage-taking to death, conspiracy to murder, and conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization.
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AFP via Getty Images)US and British officials claim that the four British "Beatles" killed 27 people.
They included British volunteers David Haynes and Alan Henning, and US aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig. Elsheikh said in 2012 he traveled to Syria with 38-year-old Alexanda Kotey, where he joined an al-Qaeda affiliate.
After that, they pledged his allegiance to ISIS, and in 2015 he was killed by a missile fired from a CIA drone. Joined the.
Coty was sentenced to life in prison in April after making a plea bargain last year and being forced to meet relatives of those killed.
At that time Elsheikh, who chose to go to court, appeared with him, sparing the victim's family the ordeal of attending today's judgment.
Both men escaped the death penalty after the British government was given assurances that the death penalty would be dropped before they were extradited to the United States.
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Sygma via Getty Images){66 Former Alcatraz of the Rocky Mountains Inmate Travis Dusenbury
But now, while Korty is having a much easier time in prison, El Sheikh will face ADX Florence in Colorado.
Prisoners held there - terrorists, white supremacists, rioters, serial killers, cult leaders, drug lords, and too violent to be among the general public Those deemed - have survived near-continuous solitary confinement.
They spend more than 23 hours a day in isolation in what he believes to be a 7 foot by 12 foot soundproof room with his 4 inch slit for the window. . As former prison warden Robert Hood once said, "This place was not designed for humanity." He described Florence as a place to imprison the worst classes of criminals, "a very small subset of the inmate population who show no interest in human life." ”.
It earned the nickname "Rocky's Alcatraz" because no one ever escaped. Most of the 341 inmates either die or, with luck, are released from prison by being transferred to another facility.
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Sygma via Getty Images)One of the few who got out of prison alive gives a horrifying picture of Elsheikh's life ahead.
Travis Dusenbury, 53, was sent in April 2005 to a desolate isolation prison on a 37-acre property, a two-hour drive south of Denver. I was.
From the age of 18, he was in trouble for everything from inciting riots to gun accusations. After he shot a man and was released, he was sent to federal prison for parole violations.
Dusenbury, who had mental health problems, assaulted a security guard he felt was racist and was transferred to ADX.
During his first three years, he left his cell for one hour a day and entered a "bubble." Two cells passed through.
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Robert Daemmrich )It was the only exercise he did other than doing 1,000 push-ups a day in his cell.
"For a lot of people, it's brutal," he says, from the porch of his home in Lexington, North Carolina. "When you enter the control room where Elsheikh is housed, all you see is concrete. The bed, walls, desk, shower and bathroom are all stone.
"He eats three meals a day.
``Isolation for most people is imaginable. The most debilitating thing as far as it goes.To be completely cut off from the outside world and not to see the sky, direct sunlight or grass is a doom.You can't see anything alive.For me, I was fine. There was a TV and a book, but what the control unit provided was the freedom within that cell.
"The trade-off of being so isolated is that you can always sleep, wake up and watch TV." The guards don't deal with you, they don't care, you are simply cut off from the world.
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Christopher Bucktin / Daily Mirror)Image:
Sygma via Getty Images)"It also protects you from others and protects others from you. Some wanted me dead, others Some wanted to die.”
There are already two British prisoners in the ADX. Clawed hate preacher Abu Hamza, 64, and shoe bomber Richard Reed, 49. But if he solves the plumbing system, he can converse with the people around him.
"Prison makes one original," he adds Dusenbury. "Inevitably great inventions are made. To talk to someone, hold a toilet paper wick over the plug hole and blow the water out.
"It's the only way to have a conversation within a control unit.
After three years in Special Wing, Dusenbury was transferred to the regular force for six years. Although he was still in isolation, he saw other people from the cage like individual dogs that prisoners exercised. Sometimes Khonsu could even share a "finger handshake" over the fence.
Ultimately, he was moved to the most dangerous part of the prison. Unit ".
An inmate is allowed to mix his six persons at a time during recreational hours, and may be used by members of rival gangs or groups such as the Aryan Brotherhood." Often comes into contact with "infantry".
Dusenbury, who had a strong voice for black rights in the prison system, was targeted by white supremacist soldiers.
He said that if Elsheikh entered the relegation forces, he would be foolish to let his guard down.
"A lot of people out there don't care about life," he says. "They're still murderers to kill. Men can make weapons of anything. I know someone who used dental floss to saw through the underside of a metal sink to create a deadly shank."
"It doesn't matter if you are the ISIS Beatles. If someone wants you dead, they will do anything to make it happen." made friends in retired units, including the shoe bomber Reid, whom he knew as Raheem Abdul. Muslims in America were reliable inmates and were given orderly cleaning jobs. It allowed him to talk to others in his cell.
Dusenbury said: I made no secret of it. I thought what they did was cowardly.
"I'm glad Raheem didn't do what he set out to do. We never talked about his crimes, but he was a very soft-spoken man who only wished for peace."
Dusenbury, who is employed as a restaurant employee after being a model parolee, said the key to survival within the ADX was keeping family and friends as close as possible.
"We didn't allow family visits," he adds. "The correspondent was a relative of mine. I didn't want my traveling family to see me behind the glass. I knew I was going to leave someday.
" But if you're like Elsheikh, you need all the support you can muster, and seeing the sentences these terrorists get, he may not leave."
