ADX Florence is a harsh and brutal prison in Colorado. The inmates there are just as savage, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is slated to join them if he is extradited and convicted of the spying charges that an American grand jury has imposed.
The Old Bailey has heard quite a lot about the fears Assange has of being incarcerated at ADX Florence, joining inmates such as the Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Shoebomber Richard Reid, Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
The feared H block of Florence is where terrorists and high-risk prisoners are held in constantly monitored conditions.
The tight “dehumanising” conditions are akin to “torture on some level’’, the court has heard.
Prisoners are segregated not just from the general prison population, but the outside world, with communications between inmates restricted to talking through the air vents in their cells.
The court heard how prisoners are allowed out for an hour to exercise, but sometimes this is in the middle of the night to ensure they don’t mix with any other inmate.
Abu Hamza al-Masri, the one- eyed Egyptian-born cleric who had his hand blown off and is know as The Hook, was extradited from Britain in 2012 and convicted two years later of masterminding the 1998 kidnapping of Westerners in Yemen and conspiring to create a terrorist training organisation in Oregon. The one-time associate of Osama bin Laden is serving a life term without the possibility of parole in Florence.
Assange’s lawyers say this is despite the High Court, and subsequently the European Court, being informed by US authorities there was no real prospect of Abu Hamza being detained in supermax conditions at Florence for more than a few months, for administrative reasons, pending allocation to a more suitable prison.
US prosecutors insist no undertaking was given.
For three days this week Assange’s lawyers have gone into great detail about his history of depression, his current mental state, and various psychiatrists have testified that if he is extradited to conditions described as in H Block his depression could worsen. Some witnesses said his suicide risk would be high.
His lawyers have told the court Assange is likely to be detained in the most restrictive conditions, amounting to solitary confinement, because of his political profile and perceived threat to the US.
Assange faces 18 charges under the US Espionage Act relating to the 2010 release by WikiLeaks of 500,000 secret files detailing aspects of US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington claims he helped intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to steal the documents before exposing sources around the world.
If convicted, Assange could be jailed for up to 175 years. Guzman is serving life plus 30 years for his leadership of the Sinola cartel, Reid three life sentences plus 110 years, Tsarnaev has had his death sentence vacated on appeal and Kaczynski three life sentences without parole.
The trial continues.
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