A lawsuit launched by far-right fanatic and mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik accusing the state of abusing his human rights has opened in Norway.
Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage in 2011, appeared in a court set up in the high-security jail in which he is serving his sentence on Monday. By accusing Norway’s Ministry of Justice of breaching his human rights, he hopes to force the authorities to end his years in isolation.
The 44-year-old killer’s lawyer laid out an argument that the conditions of his detention violated his human rights.
“He has been isolated for about 12 years,” Oeystein Storrvik told the hearing. “He is only in contact with professionals, not with other inmates.”
In earlier court filings, Storrvik had argued the isolation had left Breivik suicidal and dependent on the anti-depression medication Prozac.
Breivik claims the isolation he has faced since he started serving his prison sentence in 2012 amounts to inhumane punishment under the European Convention on Human Rights. He failed in a similar attempt in 2016 -17, when his appeal was denied by the European Court of Justice.
The extremist, who distributed copies of a manifesto before his attack, is suing the state and also asking the court to lift restrictions on his correspondence with the outside world.
He killed eight people with a car bomb in Oslo then gunned down 69 others, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp. It was Norway’s worst peacetime atrocity.
Breivik spends his time in a dedicated section of Ringerike prison, the third prison in which he has been held. His separated section includes a training room, a kitchen, a TV room and a bathroom, pictures from a visit last month by news agency NTB showed.
He is allowed to keep three budgerigars as pets and let them fly freely in the area, NTB reported.
The term used in norway is ‘Forvaring’, which under conditions such as risk of repeating the offense, or inspiring others to do similar things (probs a few others too) means it can get extended. This extension can happen more than once if the risk is dermed to be real, or if they show no/insufficient degrees of rehabilitation.
So while i cant see the actual future, its extremely unlikely he will walk free, ever. What he’s doing here is, again (as this aint the first time he complained), publicity for his views.
And the worst part…
Ultimately he failed in his explicit goal to spark an uprising but in a sense he was successful in other ways. Partially inspiring that dude in NZ (christchurch?) and so on, but domestically his actions did help shift the political landscape to the right, and it was a blow to thenlabour party which they are still reeling from to this day.
Edit: he had also legally changed his name to “Fjottolf Hansen”.