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.

read more: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/8/far-right-mass-killer-breivik-sues-norway-for-human-rights-abuse

  • Cool. It is his right to do so.

    Given the fairly decent conditions he’s reported to be living in, and Norway’s efforts to give him every avenue to rehabilitate, I very much doubt this case will get very far.

    As always, the only winners in pointless stuff like this are the solicitors and lawyers.

  •  arc   ( @arc@lemm.ee ) 
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    4 months ago

    Breivik is the sort of murderer, where there is absolutely zero doubt about his guilt, where the crimes themselves are heinous, and where he should never see the outside of a jail cell ever. If Norway had voted to throw him down a mineshaft, or imprison him in a windowless cell where he was fed slops for the rest of his life I couldn’t care less.

    But Norway isn’t like that and he is being treated exceptionally well by any standard for his category of offence. His pathetic narcissistic legal whining to the courts will go nowhere and he’ll stew in prison for as long as they can legally hold him. I think authorities would be relieved if he made good on his threats since it spares them the concern of what happens if he is eventually released.

    • It is his form of entertainment & probably feels like this gives him a stage & relevance. Piece of shit should never see the outside of his cell, and all his court appearances should be via cctv.

    • Thanks for that comment. Way to many people hearing this would want Norway to change their justice system to the worse to make the life of one horrible person worse. Luckily Norwegians do understand how good their system is and don’t want to destroy it for such petty reasons like vengeance.

    •  tree   ( @tree@lemmy.zip ) OP
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      234 months ago

      He’s alive and he got sentenced 21 years which was the maximum sentence, I’m not familiar with Norwegian law enough, but I assume they will somehow extend it when it expires in the 2030s, don’t see how someone like this could be trusted to not do something else comparable especially since he has basically shown no remorse for his actions.

      from a quora search

      He’s going to be in prison the full 21 years. After this, there will be a parole review, where they can decide to hold him for a further 5 years. After that 5 years, the same thing will happen again and again and again.

      https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-chance-that-Anders-Breivik-will-ever-be-released

      •  neidu2   ( @neidu2@feddit.nl ) 
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        Noggie here. He wasn’t sentenced to 21 years in prison (which is, as you state, the maximum prison sentence here), but something that I think best can be translated to “21 years of detention/containment” which is more of a healthcare/psych approach. While this usually involves prison as well, unlike a normal prison sentence, this can be extended to however long is deemed necessary with no maximum duration.

        Let him rot.

          •  Flag   ( @Flag@kbin.social ) 
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            4 months ago

            The term used in norway is ‘Forvaring’, which under conditions such as risk of repeating the offense, or inspiring others to do similar things (probs a few others too) means it can get extended. This extension can happen more than once if the risk is dermed to be real, or if they show no/insufficient degrees of rehabilitation.

            So while i cant see the actual future, its extremely unlikely he will walk free, ever. What he’s doing here is, again (as this aint the first time he complained), publicity for his views.

            And the worst part…

            Ultimately he failed in his explicit goal to spark an uprising but in a sense he was successful in other ways. Partially inspiring that dude in NZ (christchurch?) and so on, but domestically his actions did help shift the political landscape to the right, and it was a blow to thenlabour party which they are still reeling from to this day.

            Edit: he had also legally changed his name to “Fjottolf Hansen”.

  • “He has been isolated for about 12 years,” Oeystein Storrvik told the hearing. “He is only in contact with professionals, not with other inmates.”

    Depending on the extent of the isolation he might actually have a case. Being deprived of human contact is extremely unhealthy.

    Just execute him if he’s going to basically be in solitary for the rest of his life. It’d be more humane.

              • 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.

        • Your sadism is noted

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

          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.

          •  arc   ( @arc@lemm.ee ) 
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            34 months ago

            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)

    •  arc   ( @arc@lemm.ee ) 
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      24 months ago

      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.

    •  Zerush   ( @Zerush@lemmy.ml ) 
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      All people deserve to be treated according to human rights, although I have doubts about exemplars like Breivic, who is not a conservative, but a fucking nazi killer bastard, who does not deserve to be named as a human, nor to be named as an animal so as not to insult these. I don’t even understand why they give it prominence with this news. It’s okay to be locked up for life, away from people, I hope as the girlfriend of a 2-meter prisoner, that puts his ass off like the exhaust pipe of a truck.

      • If your entire ideology is to push fascism and take away other’s human rights you’ve lost the right to have them protect yourself. Things have only gotten so bad because we’ve passively protected these monsters and it’s time we treat them like the threats to society that they are.

        • It is the misunderstood tolerance, of also tolerating those who want to destroy it. Giving them protagonism as an equal, will end in destruction of a civilized society. Fascism is not a political ideology that can be discussed, it is a system of plain oppression that does not tolerate oppositions, that suppresses using violence, just as this 🤬 Breivic showed, murdering twenty young people in cold blood one after another and killing 70 people with a bomb.

    •  Dra   ( @Dra@lemmy.zip ) 
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      24 months ago

      Just a normal, well-adjusted lemmy comment definitely not made by a chronically online person with little to no real life experience…

      Human rights, for murderers, all the way to people who marginally disagree with you politically is the foundation of a civilised society.

    •  Syndic   ( @Syndic@feddit.de ) 
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      4 months ago

      Luckily Norwegians do understand and respect their justice system better than people like you and don’t want to introduce such a shitty tool of vengeance just for one guy. Especially since that very fucker wanted Norway to get a much harsher justice system in the first place. Them granting him the same rights every other prisoner in Norway has, is winning against his ideology of hatred.

      And the success of their justice system, especially when compared to countries who use death penalty and other punitive measures such as state sanctioned rape, speaks for itself. Many countries could learn a lot from Norway.

  • People like him are why Norway’s system is immoral.

    It’s immoral to tell a community they owe something to someone actively trying to destroy it. The community is allowed to put its best interests above threats to it, and that is the only moral mindset.

    The garbage people spew to justify letting Norway harm everyone else by essentially enabling this scumbag is simply immoral, and always has been.

        •  Enitoni   ( @enitoni@beehaw.org ) 
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          Ok. Or you could answer my question instead of assuming I’m being disingenuous for wanting to understand you. If this is how you act towards people simply for asking a question then block me.

          And no, it’s not obvious. It’s not obvious at all.