Moussaoui Sentenced to Life at Supermax

This artist's rendering shows Rosemary Dillard, who lost her husband Eddie on September 11, 2001, center at podium, speaking to Zacarias Moussaoui, left, as family members of 9/11 victims Lisa Beilke, right, Abraham Scott, second from right, and Lisa Dolan, second from left, listen in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., during the sentencing of the convicted al-Qaeda conspirator Thursday, May 4, 2006. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, center, sentenced Moussaoui to life in prison. (AP Photo/Dana Verkouteren)

This is one story that I've been watching, but I haven't really felt the need to comment on it--until now. This is off Yahoo News:

DENVER - A defiant Zacarias Moussaoui spent weeks at trial telling anyone who would listen that he will never feel any remorse for his role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Now, he has been ordered to spend the rest of his life in a cell with no one to talk to at a prison known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies."

Moussaoui was sentenced Thursday to life in prison after scolding Americans for missing a chance to learn from him why they are hated by al-Qaida terrorists. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema sentenced the unrepentant 37-year-old Frenchman to six life sentences and told him he would "die with a whimper," isolated from the world and not in the glory of martyrdom.

His next stop is expected to be the federal maximum-security prison in Florence, a small town 90 miles southwest of Denver.

At Supermax, he would spend 23 hours a day in a cell with a tiny window and have little to no contact with other notorious criminals, including Ramzi Yousef, Eric Rudolph, Ted Kaczynski and Terry Nichols on "bombers' row." Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber Moussaoui said was to help him fly a fifth plane into the White House, is also serving a life sentence there.

Supermax is the hardest of the hard-core prisons. It is a place where they will lock you up, throw away the key, and your life will be literally rotted away. It is a place where you will disappear from society, and your name will be forgotten. It is a far more appropriate punishment for Moussaoui than the death penalty. Moussaoui likely believed that his execution would enable him to become a martyr within the Muslim world, and allow him his place among the fellow 9/11 hijackers in Paradise, where he can frolic with virgins. This is a far better punishment--let him sit in a cell for the rest of his life, thinking about what he has done. And Supermax will rot him. Continuing on:

The $60 million Supermax, formally called Administrative Maximum, was built in 1995 in Florence, a town of 3,600 people. It 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 television, 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. They can take academic courses via closed-circuit TV in each cell.

Moussaoui will be sitting in that cell for 23 hours a day, alone with almost no contact from anyone on the outside world.

An appropriate punishment for him.