Anders Behring Breivik, Utoya’s killer, lost his case against the Norwegian state for inhumane treatment

Is Anders Behring Breivik treated inhumanely in prison? Norwegian justice again came to a negative conclusion on Thursday. She fired a right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in 2011. Alone for 12 years in a maximum security unit, Breivik attacked the Norwegian state, arguing that his prison isolation violated his human rights.

During the five-day trial, which took place in early January in the gymnasium of Ringerike Prison (southeast), the extremist, now 45, acted like a depressed Prozac addict, sometimes in tears. He accused the authorities of wanting to “push him to commit suicide.” For its part, the state has justified Breivik’s strict but comfortable prison regime as dangerous, saying it still poses “an absolutely extreme danger of completely unbridled violence.”

“Breivik benefits every day from good material conditions of detention and relatively great freedom,” Oslo court judge Birgitte Kolrud ruled in her decision. It seems unrealistic to foresee major changes (in the prison regime, editor’s note), since it is unlikely that we will see significant changes in the risk picture in the short term. »

Before the decision was announced, Breivik’s lawyer told AFP that if unsuccessful, he would appeal to the first instance. On 22 July 2011, Breivik first detonated a bomb outside government headquarters in Oslo, killing eight people, then killed a further 69 people, most of them teenagers, by opening fire at a summer camp in Oslo. . In 2012, he was sentenced to the maximum penalty then in force in Norway, namely 21 years in prison, renewable as long as he was considered dangerous.

In the prison, he has three separate rooms – a living cell, an exercise cell and a gym – on the top floor, and on the bottom floor, which he shares alternately with another inmate, a kitchen, TV room, dining room and visiting room. In accordance with his request for a pet, he has access to a flat screen, an Xbox gaming console and three parrots. “Breivik is treated particularly well,” prison director Eirik Bergstedt testified.

Neither depression nor suicidal thoughts

But his lawyer argued that the authorities had not taken sufficient measures to compensate for his isolation, and his human contact was essentially limited to contacts with professionals (security guards, lawyers, a pastor). “He will never come out, he understands that very well,” Øystein Storrvik said during the trial. “Can we impose a (de facto) life sentence and prevent any human contact during the execution of that sentence? “.

He said his client’s treatment violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits “inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment.” Also citing Article 8 of the Convention, which guarantees the right to correspondence, Breivik also demanded exemption from filtering his mail. “Breivik poses the same danger today as he did on July 21, 2011,” countered Andreas Hjetland, emphasizing that he can still commit violence or inspire others to do so.

During the trial, it turned out that in 2018, Breivik made three suicide attempts, as well as a campaign of disobedience: he then drew inscriptions with his excrement, including a swastika, shouted “Sieg Heil” and went on a hunger strike. However, two experts called into court concluded that the prisoner was neither seriously depressed nor suicidal.

“It doesn’t give the impression that he had a real desire to die,” said the psychologist responsible for assessing his danger, Innie Raine, citing reports in which he admitted his suicide attempts were intended as a means of seeing through his demands. met. In 2016, Breivik already sued on the same grounds and partially won the case in the first instance, but was completely rejected on appeal. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) then declared his complaint “inadmissible.”