Report: '93 World Trade Center bomber sues to end solitary confinement

Ramzi Yousef was convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. / AP Photo

After 15 years in solitary confinement, the man convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing is reportedly suing for more human contact.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Ramzi Yousef wants to convince a federal judge to live out the rest of his life sentence in a more open prison environment. The judge is expected to rule in the near future whether the suit will go to trial.

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Yousef, now 44, was sentenced to life plus 240 years for his role in the truck bombing that killed six people and injured more than 1,000 at the World Trade Center in February 1993. He is being held at a maximum security prison called "Supermax" in the Colorado Rockies.

The lawsuit argues Yousef is being kept isolated for 24 hours a day because of his conviction - something he cannot change.

"I request an immediate end to my solitary confinement and ask to be in a unit in an open prison environment where inmates are allowed outside their cells for no less than 14 hours a day," he wrote the warden, according to government records obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Yousef's U.S. attorney told the Times tgat years in solitary confinement has already taken a psychological toll on is client. Prison officials maintain he is a security threat.

The legality of solitary confinement was also brought up in the case of Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of leaking confidential documents to WikiLeaks. Manning's lawyers argued he was illegally punished by being locked up alone in a small cell for nearly nine months at the Marine Corps brig in Quanitco, Va.

[rktrog]

Aww. they have a terrorist and a traitor in solitairy.
should we let them out? NO!
They have already demonstrated that they don't play nicely with others.
they don't like it, tough.
if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
It's called punishment. It isn't efective if you don't maintain it.

[OBRIENKV]

Great, therefore everyone that is convicted of murder should be put in solitary confinement for life.

[matt6052]

Life plus 240!

They'll give him a little bit of break on the 240 after he's dead.

[judymar14]

He should have gotten what he would in the country he came from for killing six people...Torture then beheading. Carried out in three days.

[OBRIENKV]

That's fine, as long as you don't really want the United States to have exacted that punishment.

[noneofabove]

Let's be merciful and allow him to leave solitary when he only has 100 more years on his sentence.

[imnho]

He is too big a threat to be let out into general population. His goal is to convert other prisoners to his why of thinking. He will never get out but some of the people he might convert could one day set out and carry on with his evil intentions. For societies saftey he should stay where he is.

[Colt4542]

The sentence Yousef received was the harshest available. Obviously, the goal was to make him suffer - long and hard. The death penalty is so much more merciful than life without parole.

[zmonkee]

hammer1one says: It's heart warming to see how many people condone torture. Several judges have ruled that solitary confinement in excess of 30 days violate the 8th Amendment. Amendments were put in place to protect unpopular issues. Popular issues wouldn't need an amendment-

SL0W_NEWS says: Solitary Confinement is a form of torture. It's sad that the USA still engages in this.


Hammer and Slow--- seriously...what is wrong with you??

[OBRIENKV]

They're right. Solitary confinement will probably 100% lead to severe mental illness in the prison with no ability to self-prevent that outcome. Madness will happen, with no way to end it. That's torture. This terrorist doesn't deserve spit, but if we cheer torture, it changes who we are. That's the last thing we should ever let terrorists accomplish.

[Weallhaveone]

Just give him a yard of rope, he can sort it out.

[ammo17]

if they executed this piece of garbage back then today no one would have remembered his name.

[margroks]

Tough. The people he killed are ot alive and he is. Let him stay where he is and suffer. He deserves it.