Located on a high desert plain in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, 90 miles south of Denver, Florence had its first fall of winter snow last week, turning the sun-yellowed landscape a blinding white.
But from his cell on a unit that also houses fellow al-Qaeda terrorists, Reid, 33, sees nothing of the panorama.
For the rest of his life, his window on the world will be a slit measuring 42 in long and four inches wide, through which he can glimpse an enclosed concrete yard with 25 ft walls and, through the chainlink mesh that covers it, a small patch of sky. The prison, which opened in 1994, was built following the 1983 killings of guards at a penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. It was intended to hold the country's most dangerous prisoners.
"It's sensory deprivation — not Guantanamo, not hoods over your head and mental torture, but the next worst thing," one guard claimed.
The al-Qaeda inmates are kept in a separate area from other prisoners "partly because they have common needs particular to their faith, partly to ensure they cannot try to recruit others to their cause," explained one guard.
