LAST UPDATE | 15 Feb
A NORWAY COURT has said the strict prison conditions imposed on rightwing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a 2011 rampage, were not “inhumane” as he claimed.
Breivik, 45, has been held apart from other inmates in high-security facilities for almost 12 years.
He had sued the Norwegian state, arguing that his extended isolation was a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which prohibits “inhumane” and “degrading” treatment.
During a five-day hearing in early January held for security reasons in the gymnasium of the Ringerike prison, Breivik said he was depressed and addicted to Prozac, at times breaking down in sobs.
He accused authorities of trying to “push me to suicide”.
The state argued that his strict – yet comfortable – conditions are justified, saying he poses “an absolutely extreme risk of totally unbridled violence”.
“Breivik has good material prison conditions and a relatively large amount of freedom in his daily life,” judge Birgitte Kolrud wrote in the verdict.
“It seems unrealistic to foresee any major changes as it is unlikely there will be any significant changes in the risk scenario in the short-term,” she said.
Prior to the announcement of the verdict, Breivik’s lawyer told AFP he would file an appeal if they did not win their case.
On 22 July 2011, Breivik set off a bomb near government offices in Oslo, killing eight people, before gunning down 69 others, mostly teens, at a Labour Party youth wing summer camp on the island of Utoya.
He was sentenced in 2012 to 21 years in prison, which can be extended as long as he is considered a threat.
In prison, Breivik has three private rooms to himself: a living room, a study and a small gym.
On the floor below – which he shares with another prisoner, though never at the same time – he also has access to a kitchen, a TV lounge, a dining room and a room for visits.
He has access to a flat screen TV, an Xbox game console, and three budgies to accomodate his request for a pet.
“Breivik is particularly well treated,” prison director Eirik Bergstedt testified.
But his lawyer argued that authorities have not put sufficient measures in place to compensate for Breivik’s isolation, with his human interactions mostly limited to contacts with professionals such as wardens, lawyers and a chaplain.
“He’ll never get out, he’s well aware of that,” his lawyer Oystein Storrvik told the court.
“Can you hand down a (de facto) life sentence and prevent him from any human contact while the sentence is served?” he asked.
He said the state was also violating Article 8 of the ECHR, which guarantees the right to correspondence, and had sought an easing of the restrictions on Breivik’s incoming and outgoing letters.
“Breivik represents the same danger today as on July 21, 2011,” argued the lawyer for the state, Andreas Hjetland, stressing that the plaintiff was still capable of carrying out acts of violence and of inspiring others to do the same.
During the trial, it emerged that Breivik had tried to die by suicide three times during his imprisonment and had launched a civil disobedience campaign in 2018.
He had drawn symbols such as a swastika with his feces, cried “Sieg Heil” and undertaken a hunger strike.
Two experts told the court however that they believed Breivik was neither depressed nor suicidal.
Inni Rein, a psychologist tasked with assessing the danger Breivik poses, addressed reports in which Breivik admitted the suicide attempts were a bid to get his way.
“It doesn’t give the impression that he really wanted to die,” she said.
An Oslo district court stunned the world in 2016 when it ruled his isolation was a breach of his rights.
On appeal, Norway’s higher courts found in the state’s favour, and the European Court of Human Rights in 2018 dismissed his case as “inadmissible”.
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