The Nation of Islam at Loretto
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The Nation of Islam at Loretto was, by John Kiriakou's account, the largest Muslim faction in the prison. He describes the Muslim prisoners at FCI Loretto as a diverse group with many surprising pockets: several Arab, Kurdish, Indian, Afghan and Pakistani prisoners, both Sunni and Shia. But the largest Muslim faction by far was African American converts to the Nation of Islam.

The approach

The exchange happened on Kiriakou's first day, not long after the Aryans had extended their own invitation to sit with them.

Two hugely built African American prisoners wearing skull caps approached him holding a newspaper. One of them asked whether he was the man from the CIA. Kiriakou said he was.

The answer he was given was that Reverend Farrakhan said he was a hero of the Muslim people, and that they wanted him to know he would not have any problems with them. Kiriakou thanked them, and the two men walked away.

Afterwards

Kiriakou records that they never spoke to each other again, and that he never had any problems with the Black Muslims at Loretto.

The episode is one of several first-day encounters he uses to describe how a new prisoner was sorted at Loretto. The Aryans vetted him with three questions, the last of which introduced him to the word chomo, and then invited him to their cafeteria table. The one group that did not approach him that day, he notes, was the Italians, the faction he came to respect most and to whom he became closest.

Kiriakou places all of this within a prison he describes as strictly divided: whites ate with whites, Black prisoners with Black prisoners, Hispanic prisoners with Hispanic prisoners, and the television room was segregated too. Friendships could cross factions, he says, but eating and watching television together could not.

See also

- Louis Farrakhan
- FCI Loretto
- The Italians at Loretto
- Chomo
- Prison racial segregation
