By: E&P Staff On Tuesday, Conrad Black completes his first full year in prison on a six-year sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice arising from his years as chairman of the parent company and controlling holding companies of the Chicago Sun-Times and its siblings.
In a long e-mail interview with National Post reporter Theresa Tedesco to mark the occasion, Black portrays life in the federal prison in Florida as not unpleasant, with peaceable and interesting fellow inmates and opportunities to teach history, learn to play the piano, and tutor prisoners earning their GED.
Black says prison life has ?expanded? his social circle, and that he?s encountered no violence or altercations of any kind.
He also stoutly maintains his innocence, calling his former longtime business partner, David Radler, a thief and a perjurer, and declaring that his successors thoroughly destroyed the company formerly known as Hollinger International Inc.
?How do you feel knowing he (Radler) is now a free man back in Canada?,? Tedesco asks in the interview. (In a plea bargain with federal prosecutors in exchange for his testimony, Radler pleaded guilty to a single count of fraud and was sentenced to 29 months in prison. He was transferred to a Canadian jail and released after serving a total of 10 months.)
Black responds: ?He made his decision and double-crossed his friends and associates of many years, having committed illegalities himself. He has confessed to lying and stealing, and his prosecution sponsors have declared that he is a perjurer, having extorted and suborned his perjury. My co-defendants and I are innocent of these charges, as he knows. We apparently have different values, and I would not change places with him.?
This is how Black describes his daily routine:
?I get up just after 7 except on the weekends and holidays when it is possible to sleep in. I eat some granola and go to my workplace where I tutor high school-leaving candidates, one-on-one, though sometimes I have to deal with up to four at a time, around my desk, and talk with fellow tutors and other convivial people. I lunch around 11 with friends from education, work on e-mails, play the piano for 30 to 60 minutes, return to my tutoring tasks by 1, return to my unit at 3, deal with more e-mails, rest from 4 to 6, eat dinner in the unit then, and go for a walk in the compound or recreation yard for a couple of hours, drinking coffee well-made by Colombian fellow-residents, and come back into the residence about 8: 30, deal with e-mails and whatever, have my shower etc., around midnight, read until 1-1:30 a. m. and go to sleep. On the weekends it is pretty open.?
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