Zacarias Moussaoui

The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema at the end of a two-month trial in which the jury rejected the government's case to have Moussaoui executed.

Moussaoui is expected to serve his sentence at the Administrative Maximum United States Penitentiary, or Admax, in Florence, Colorado, the federal government's most secure prison, located in the high desert 130 km south of Denver.

Dubbed the "Alcatraz of the Rockies" by prison experts -- and "The Tombs" by many prisoners and their lawyers -- the 12-year-old facility houses about 400 of the most dangerous and infamous prisoners in the federal system, from "Unabomber" Theodore J. Kaczynski to Ramzi Yousef, architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Japanese Red Army member Yu Kikumura is incarcerated there.

The Japan Times Weekly: May 13, 2006
(C) All rights reserved