DISGRACED former US congressman Anthony Weiner has started a sentence for sending sexually explicit texts. He is in the prison that once housed Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Weiner, 53, who sent the messages to a 15-year-old after previous incidents involving women, is serving 21 months at the Federal Medical Centre in Massachusetts.

It has more than 1,000 inmates at the medical centre and over 100 more at an adjacent minimum security satellite camp.

Weiner was sentenced in September by a judge who said Weiner’s crime resulted from a “very strong compulsion”.

Weiner said he had been “a very sick man for a very long time”. His estranged wife Huma Abedin was an aide to Hillary Clinton.