Russian national Viktor Bout told Sputnik about his experience witnessing the US elections season from inside a prison where many inmates reject the country's legitimacy
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th October, 2020) Russian national Viktor Bout told Sputnik about his experience witnessing the US elections season from inside a prison where many inmates reject the country's legitimacy.
Bout wrote to Sputnik from the Communication Management Unit of the Marion prison in Illinois, one of two such special penitentiaries in the US where all prisoner communications are monitored without exception. Halfway through his 25-year sentence on accusations of conspiring to kill US citizens and of supporting terrorism, Bout served with the general population but was returned to the special unit with inmates found guilty of international and domestic terrorism.
"Among the Americans in the special bloc there are many who do not recognize the American state in its current form at all - from both extreme left and extreme right positions, and they are also not very interested in the campaign. Probably, the situation is different in the blocks of the general strict regime, but since the moment of transfer back to the special block, I have no connection with the blocks of the general strict regime," Bout said.
Asked about the prisoners' habits of following the election cycle, Bout said that the inmates are preferring to spend their allotted free time outdoors rather than consuming news media after months of isolation due to COVID-19 measures.
"The complete isolation in which we remained here because of the outbreak of Covid [COVID-19] in prison has been partially removed, that is, you do not need to sit in a cell all day, you can spend three to four hours a day in common rooms where there are computers and a television, and in a small courtyard from which you cannot see the surroundings but you can see the sky, and we are all now using these opportunities to the fullest, after months of isolation," Bout told Sputnik in an email writeup.
Similarly, Bout said that the prisoners avoid touching on political subjects because of the extremely opposing views the inmates harbor.
"There is a very delicate balance between the different ideologies and worldview systems held by prisoners, both foreigners and Americans, both whites and African Americans, and any clash of opinions expressed aloud can cause violent conflict. Here people keep either in small groups or alone, but due to the limited space and the small number of prisoners, of whom there are rarely much more than four dozen in the special block, they all the time communicate with each other on daily everyday topics, but try to avoid political topics," Bout said, responding to a question about the penitentiary's reaction to the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the US and the Western world earlier this year.
Widely regarded as a notorious arms dealer, Bout was detained in Thailand in 2008 at the request of the US government as a result of a sting operation by the US special services. He was then transferred to the United States where a court found him guilty of conspiring to kill US citizens and of supporting terrorism.
