Van Der Sloot Faces Long Wait in Desolate Peruvian Prison System

June 17, 2010— -- Charged in the strangling death of a young Peruvian woman last month, Joran van der Sloot, the Dutch playboy also suspected of killing Alabama teen Natalee Holloway five years ago in Aruba, is awaiting trial in a desolate Peruvian prison.

After he was hustled out of a Lima courthouse last week through an angry mob shouting, "You're a killer" and "an assassin," van der Sloot, 22, has been held at the primitive Miguel Castro Castro prison, 40-minutes outside the capital city.

Former inmates at the medieval-dungeon-like Castro Castro told "20/20" they have little access to water or food.

One former inmate, Willie Ruiz, who said he was falsely accused of being a terrorist, spent 5 1/2 years there.

"We were crowded into a cell and kept there for 23 1/2 hours a day," he said. "There was a hole in the ground that we used as a toilet. It was atrocious."

Built for 1,000 inmates, Castro Castro holds nearly twice that number today, and former inmates say they control an underground economy where cash can buy just about anything.

"(P)rostitutes, alcohol, drugs," Ruiz said. "Even take-out food.

"You can even buy weapons, '' he added. "Not just knives but also guns ... and bullets. It happens all the time."

Recently a cache of weaponry, including guns and knives, was confiscated at the prison.

Prison officials admit that violence and corruption are serious problems in their jails, for which they blame overcrowding and a lack of resources.

Van der Sloot, who officials say is frightened and depressed, requested isolation at Castro Castro and, according to The Associated Press, is sharing a cell block with a reputed Colombian hit man.

If convicted, things may get worse for van der Sloot, who was raised in Aruba.

He could be sent to the notorious San Juan de Lurigancho men's prison, described by one prominent Peruvian attorney as "Dante's Inferno."

"It is hell in there,'' said Sandro Monteblanco, a prominent Peruvian attorney. "I mean you hear people talk about Turkish prisons and what not, or prisons in the Middle East, I think they use those analogies, those examples, because they haven't been to a Peruvian prison."