Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being held at the Federal Medical Center Devens. The 19-year-old is charged for the April 15 bombings that killed three people at the Boston Marathon. (nicco/Creative Commons)

The 19-year-old is locked inside a 10-by-10-foot cell with a steel door, a slot for food and an observation window, a prison spokesman told CNN. Tsarnaev is able to speak and has been interacting with staff at the Federal Medical Center Devens in Massachusetts.

The spokesman said medical professionals at the prison medical facility are checking in on Tsarnaev regularly, but referred questions on his medical condition to the FBI because the facility does not assign medical condition rankings like civilian hospitals.

Devens is equipped to handle federal prisoners ranging from minimum-security white-collar criminals to violent felons who would be at maximum-security penitentiaries if not for their medical conditions, according to the Wall Street Journal. Violent felons are normally kept in single-person cells isolated from the lower-risk prisoners.

More from the Wall Street Journal:

Rooms with steel doors and wickets—prison lingo for slots used to pass food—can be equipped with hospital beds and patient-monitoring equipment to keep violent or high-risk offenders under lockdown, even during treatment, prison spokesman John Colautti said. When patients must be moved—for example, to receive X-rays—staff members take extra precautions, he said.

The site, which occupies a wooded corner of the army base, is a cluster of institutional buildings surrounded by a double fence.

The 60 on-staff nurses and health professionals are trained corrections officers, who spend three weeks each year practicing firearms skills and techniques to restrain prisoners, among other things, at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Ga., Mr. Colautti said.

Suspects' parents cancel U.S. trip

While Tsarnaev is being held in custody, his parents have retreated to a village in southern Russia to stay out of the spotlight and abandoned plans to travel to the United States, Reuters reported. The father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said he believed he would not be allowed to see Dzhokhar, who was captured and charged with the April 15 bombings that killed three people and injured 264.

"I am not going back to the United States. For now I am here. I am ill," said Anzor Tsarnaev.

In the interview with Reuters, the father said he had planned to travel to the U.S. to see Dzhokhar and bury his elder son, Tamerlan, who was killed in a gunfight with police during the manhunt following the bombings.

The suspects' mother, Zebeidat, was in the village with Anzor, but refused to speak. The couple are divorced but have stayed together. Anzor denied Tamerlan had any ties with militants during the elder son's six-month visit to Dagestan.

"Sometimes we went to the mosque. We went to see our relatives, in Dagestan, in Chechnya. We visited a lot of households, it was a nice atmosphere," Anzor said.

The father also said he does not think U.S. authorities will release Tamerlan's body for burial in his homeland.

"They won't give us his body," he said, his voice breaking with emotion. "We wont be able to bury him in our land."

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