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.
I’m not a prison abolitionist
I am, don’t need prisons for dead Nazis
The death penalty is not abolitionist. If you think they should just kill this guy but are also vaguely in favor of prison abolition, there’s a real contradiction you need to work out.
I think the callous language used to describe people’s wishes here is incorrect and gross, but I don’t wholly disagree. It doesn’t seem contradictory to envision restorative justice for anti-social violence and repression of our class enemies by any means necessary. What else can class struggle entail? Mao reminds us “revolution is not a dinner party. It is a violent process by which one class overthrows another.” Violence is not to be treated lightly.
What to do with severely mentally ill but structurely-powerless reactionaries is a difficult edge case. I think relatively humane life imprisonment is the best option.