Van der Sloot's Peru Prison 'Surprisingly Clean'

(June 22) -- From the outside, Joran van der Sloot's private cell doesn't look all that bad. Potted plants surround mint-green walls, and a window seems to offer the accused murderer a view into a courtyard.

Experts say Peru's Miguel Castro Castro prison could be a nightmare for the 22-year-old Dutchman, charged with the murder of a 21-year-old Peruvian woman. But a recent televised tour of the prison where van der Sloot is being held shows a maximum-security facility that doesn't look all that menacing. Prisoners, it seems, can even tend a rose garden and take ceramics classes.

Cameras were not allowed into van der Sloot's cell, which is reportedly rat infested. But prison officials took a "Today" show reporter to see a different side of the prison, which she called "surprisingly clean and quiet."

Prisoners, which NBC said were "hand-picked" by officials, had sunny things to say about Castro Castro.

"I guess they worry about him so much. They shouldn't be. He's safe here," one unnamed prisoner told NBC.

"It's elegant here," said another. The sarcasm was hard to miss.

But a guard told NBC that prisoners would kill van der Sloot if they had the chance. And experts like Michael Griffith, senior partner at the International Legal Defense Counsel, say the prison is notorious for a reason.

"Approximately 500 inmates, including 135 women, have brought lawsuits against the guards in that prison for physically abusing them," Griffith told AOL News last week.