From his experience in maximum security federal prisons in the United States, Carlos Lehder described What is extreme isolation regime like? which, according to him, Nicolás Maduro faces after his capture and transfer to US territory.
In an interview with Beyond the silence podcastLehder assured that this type of confinement “it is not a common prison”but a confinement that he repeatedly defined as “the dark planet.”
Journalist Rafael Poveda, who hosts the podcast, compared Maduro’s detention process with the one Lehder experienced more than four decades ago and asked him What is it like to be detained in a federal prison? and what can a person expect who is then sent to a super maximum security prison.
Lehder responded by recalling his own transfer: “On the same day of my arrest I was handed over to the North American authorities. That same day I was transferred to Guantánamo, Cuba, to the military base, and that same night we arrived in Tampa.”
As he reported, In less than 48 hours he was presented before a federal judge. “It is a person identification hearing. Not that one is going to argue anything more. “The judge ordered my arrest and I was immediately transferred to the Marion Penitentiary in Illinois, the only super-maximum security prison that existed at that time,” he explained.
Lehder clarified that the procedure was legal and complied with the dangerousness classification applied by the US prison system. “In the United States they put you in prisons according to their documented degree of danger. They considered that I was one of the most dangerous men in the world. I assume that today it is the same case with Nicolás Maduro,” he stated.
What are maximum security cells in the United States like?
When asked about the conditions of confinement, Lehder was forceful. “It is the dark planet. There is no light there, there is no sun. There is no conversation or human contact, except with the guards who give you food,” he said. He explained that the regime is permanent solitary confinement.
“You are assigned to the highest security custody permissible by the laws of the United States and It is solitary confinement until the day the body can no longer resist.
Regarding the cell in which Nicolás Maduro is being held, he explained: “I was not in the section where he is; they had that section for terrorists; I was in another section that was also isolated.”
“He is confined in a cell that has no furniture. I don’t know if they have a television today or not, but that regime is every hour. Nowadays, with the cameras, they are monitoring him at all hours.” He added that “every hour, personally, a guard comes day and night to see you.” Lehder explained that the food is the same for all inmates in the jail.
Are there visits in this type of prisons?
Lehder explained that There are no in-person visits. “Conjugal visits, zero, absolutely not. What’s more, there are no visits except through television. Personal visits are not allowed,” he said.
“Nicolás Maduro is confined to the maximum permissible level of security, no type of visit is allowed.”
Regarding access to the outdoors, he stated: “The regulations say that “Three hours a week they take him out to a patio,” but he specified that “today New York has temperatures below zero” and that that patio is “grilled, without games, without a roof and fully supervised.”
The isolation, in his experience, is absolute. “Can you talk to someone?” the interviewer asked.
“Zero, absolutely not. It is part of the super maximum security confinement, you will never be with any prisoner, there is no human contact of any kind,” he insisted.
The cells, he indicated, usually measure “three meters by five meters”although he recalled that in Marion “they were much smaller, three meters by three meters.”
Lehder recalled that the Marion Penitentiary was known as “the grave” and that prisoners from Alcatraz were transferred there. “There was never contact with one prisoner and another,” he said.
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