Alcatraz of the Rockies ready for Moussaoui

Inmates at the Supermax are allowed telephone calls and visitors.
DENVER (AP) -- 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 would 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 would "see the sky but not the mountains or other terrain," former warden Robert Hood said.
Religious rights
Still, Moussaoui would be afforded religious rights as a Muslim and probably a special diet if he behaves. Inmates at Supermax 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 and the warden wields major discretion when it comes to access. Hood said phone privileges could be as little as 15 minutes a month.
Officials at the prison declined comment Thursday after Moussaoui was formally sentenced in Virginia. 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.
"It operates under a special mission and that mission is to handle the most violent and disruptive inmates," she said.
Quiet community
The $60 million Supermax, formally called Administrative Maximum, was built in 1995 in Florence, a town of 3,600 people the police chief calls a "quiet, little retirement community." The triangular, two-story prison was designed for inmates once held at the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Ill., which had replaced Alcatraz when it closed in 1963.
The soundproofed cells were designed so inmates cannot make eye contact with each other. Each 7-by-12-feet cell has a long, narrow window looking out at other prison walls or the small concrete recreation yard.
Concrete platforms topped with mattresses function as beds. Each cell also contains a concrete stool, shower and toilet.
Hood said inmates see no current news on the small black-and-white TV, and some of the programming is official prison material. "If a newspaper is allowed it will be time-delayed," the former warden said.
Inmates get one hour out of their cells each day to eat or play basketball or handball, though some earn longer recreation periods through good behavior. They can take academic courses via closed-circuit television in each cell. Religious services are conducted in a small chapel.
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