Norway: Breivik Sues Government for Holding Him in Isolation for Over 12 Years

I don’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to hang out with his friends.

Reuters:

Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right fanatic who killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage in Norway in 2011, will testify in court on Tuesday as he presses on with a lawsuit to end his years of isolation in prison.

The 44-year-old, who emailed out copies of a manifesto before his attacks setting out his theories, is also suing the state in a bid to lift restrictions on his correspondence with the outside world.

Breivik killed eight people with a car bomb in Oslo and gunned down 69 others, most of them teenagers, on Utoeya island. He has been held in isolation ever since.

He is scheduled to start testifying at 2 p.m. local time(1300 GMT).

“I want to hear him directly, not via the media,” said Freddy Lie, the father of two daughters who were at Utoeya in 2011 – one was shot dead, the other was wounded but survived.

Lie was present at the first day of the legal proceedings on Monday and told Reuters he was planning to attend on Tuesday.


Breivik in court with one of his lawyers

Some journalists had asked Judge Birgitte Kolrud to let them broadcast Breivik’s testimony. But she ruled against that last week saying there was a risk his statement could become a platform for his views rather than testimony about his jail conditions.

Well, he’s allowed to have views.

He’s about to have a very public platform soon, because they’re going to let him out of prison.

Breivik’s lawyers argue Norway is breaching the European Convention on Human Rights, including sections saying no one should be subject to “torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

His isolation for more than a decade has left him in a “locked world” with only guards and other prison professionals whose duty is to maintain their distance, his lawyer Oeystein Storrvik told the court on Monday.

Lawyers for the Justice Ministry say the curbs are necessary as Breivik remains a threat and could inspire others to commit violence.

He was only jailed for 21 years. They denied him parole, but they can’t keep him past 2032, which is apparently not very far away.

Elon Musk will definitely ban him from Twitter.