The fanatic is suing the state in a bid to force an end to his isolation in prison, which he labels ‘inhumane’.
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.
If true, I don't think he really has a case. True solitary confinement, like we have in the US, is inhumane torture where you start hallucinating because you don't see another human being for days at a time (at minimum they kick in after 72 hours iirc)
If he's interacting with people, that's not solitary. That's just normal loneliness. Plenty of people don't have friends, it's sadly normal.
I've been in a lot of state and federal prisons in the US and I've never seen what you describe. The only inmates that are left alone in cells for days at a time are so extraordinarily violent that they can't be let out without someone getting hurt. Even they have interaction with health and security staff, but it's through a window.
Disciplinary segregation in every prison I've been in usually have two people to a cell whenever possible (which results in much lower suicide risk) and they're let out several hours a day if they're safe to do so. They can and do talk to people in adjacent cells all day long.
It's still fucking miserable, but it's not what you think.
In Norway, they get much more out of cell time in segregation as long as they're safe. There are people that are only let out of cell alone, if they're really violent.
Sadly for him he committed his crimes in a country without the death penalty. So he gets everything the state can throw at him for the rest of his life. I still think that a regular life prisoner in a US prison would envy his treatment compared to theirs.
The point is that as as someone else also pointed out he's not alone, just there is a difference between the people who he is allowed to meet and those he'd like to meet. That is an integral feature about being jailed as opposed to walking free, and in his case there is a good reason for that.
Of course I wish he too could be one day reintegrated into the society, and the Norway jail system is mile ahead of most any other country in this, especially the US, but from his requests from the article this doesn't seems the case yet, at all.
I suspect Breivik would have been allowed to meet more people, and increased interactions with other prisoners if he showed any kind of remorse or repentance for his crimes. But since he doesn't, and uses these lawsuits to advance his cause, it's no wonder that Norwegian authorities have chosen to limit his interactions to the absolute legal minimum because screw him.
No one is talking about letting him free? We're talking about him allegedly living in isolation for 12 years. That's fucked up (if true, based on another poster's first-hand knowledge he is surrounded by staff all the time so it's not really solitary confinement)