© Billy Sothern (Attorney for Albert Woodfox)/EPA Albert Woodfox released, accompanied by his brother Michel Mable, out of the West Feliciana Parish Detention Center.
In 1951, scientists at McGill University conducted an experiment in which they subjected male graduates to solitary confinement in a simulated prison cell, to see how they would cope with prolonged isolation. The study was intended to run for six weeks but was abruptly terminated after only seven days because several students began hallucinating and suffering from severe mental breakdowns.
Albert Woodfox has been held in such conditions of extreme isolation in Louisiana prisons and jails not just for seven days, but for 15,000.
On Friday, after 43 years and 10 months of almost continuous captivity totally alone in a 6ft by 9ft cell, America's longest-standing solitary confinement prisoner finally walked free.
So how did he do it? How did Albert Woodfox remain sane for more than four decades in the bleakest and most inhumane of circumstances, which have been denounced by the United Nations as a form of torture and have broken the will of lesser mortals in a matter of days?
In his first interview since being released from West Feliciana parish detention center in Louisiana, Woodfox told the
Guardian that in 1972, when he was put into "closed cell restriction", or CCR, he made a conscious decision that he would survive. He and his comrades from the so-called Angola Three, Herman Wallace and Robert King, made a vow to be strong.
Comment: The Japanese people have been staging protests over their government's plans to restart nuclear power plants throughout Japan and it appears their concerns are well-founded. There is little evidence that safety can be guaranteed or that the public will be kept informed.