Norwegian mass killer attempts to sue the state once more for an alleged breach of human rights
Stavanger, Jan 7: Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in 2011, will try for the second time on Monday to sue the Norwegian state for allegedly breaching his human rights.
Norway’s worst peacetime killer claims his solitary confinement since being imprisoned in 2012 amounts to inhumane treatment under the European Convention of Human Rights.
Norway favours rehabilitation over retribution, and Breivik is held in a two-story complex with a kitchen, dining room and TV room with an Xbox, several armchairs and black and white pictures of the Eiffel Tower on the wall. He also has a fitness room with weights, treadmill and a rowing machine, while three parakeets fly around the complex.
Even so, his lawyer, Oystein Storrvik, says it is impossible for Breivik, who now goes by the name Fjotolf Hansen, to have any meaningful relationships with anyone from the outside world, and says preventing his client from sending letters is another breach of his human rights. A similar claim during a case in 2016 was accepted, but later overturned in a higher court. It was then rejected in the European Court of Human Rights. Breivik sought parole in 2022, but was judged to have shown no signs of rehabilitation.
On July 22, 2011, Breivik killed eight people in a bomb attack in Oslo before heading to a youth camp for a centre-left political group on Utoya island, where, dressed as a police officer, he stalked and gunned down 69 people, mostly teenagers. The following year, Breivik was handed the maximum 21-year sentence with a clause – rarely used in the Norwegian justice system – that he can be held indefinitely if he is still considered a danger to society. He has shown no remorse for his attacks, which he portrayed as a crusade against multiculturalism in Norway. (AP)
