Edition: U.S. / Global  Ex-Officer in the Louima Case Protests
Conditions in Prison  Published: February 5, 2002  Charles
Schwarz, a former police officer who is serving a 15-year prison
term for the assault on Abner Louima, filed legal papers
yesterday asserting that prison authorities are holding him in
inhumane conditions, including keeping him in a solitary-
confinement ''hole'' with a concrete slab for a bed and limiting
his recreation to ''one hour a day in an animal cage.''  Mr.
Schwarz is fighting his conviction for leading Mr. Louima, a
Haitian immigrant, to the bathroom of a Brooklyn police station
where he was brutalized with a broomstick by Officer Justin A.
Volpe in 1997. Mr. Schwarz's lawyer, Ronald P. Fischetti, said
prison officials seemed to have no way to protect Mr. Schwarz
from the violent criminals in maximum-security prisons who focus
on former police officers, other than to return him repeatedly
to special detention units that he called solitary confinement.
''Guilty or innocent,'' Mr.