Oklahoma City Bombing Co-Conspirator Sues Prison

Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols is in a food fight with the federal prison in Colorado where he’s being housed.

Nichols filed a 39-page handwritten lawsuit March 16, claiming the food he gets at the facility in Florence, Colo., violates his religious rights. He also alleges the “indifference” of prison officials to his medical needs is cruel and unusual punishment.

According to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, Nichols “is compelled to consume daily those unhealthy dead and refined foods that are abhorrent to plaintiff’s sincerely held religious beliefs causing him physical, mental and spiritual torment, and to sin against God.”

He wrote that he sincerely believes that God created mankind to consume unrefined whole foods. He wrote that he is forced to sin against God by eating refined foods that destroy, “His holy temple … my body.”

Nichols wants 100 percent whole-grain foods, more fresh raw vegetables and fresh fruit, a wheat bran supplement, and digestive bacteria and enzymes. He wrote that his religious beliefs and requests “are not absurd, unorthodox, nor costly.”

His complaints about food in the past have angered victims of the 1995 attack who have said he does not deserve special treatment.

In 1996, before his federal trial, he refused to stand four times for inmate counts to protest that he wasn’t getting whole-wheat bread. In 2001, before his state trial, he fasted for almost six days to protest his food at the jail.

He also complained that prison employees have discriminated against him. He wrote that he has been stereotyped by the Bureau of Prisons, the court and the media as being a terrorist.

“Mr. Nichols is not a terrorist,” he wrote.

Prosecutors accused Nichols of helping bomber Tim McVeigh gather components and build the fertilizer bomb that blew up outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.

The blast killed 168 people and wounded more than 500 others.

McVeigh was executed for the crime in 2001.

Information from: The Oklahoman, www.newsok.com