The right-wing extremist Norwegian assassin Anders Behring Breivik has once again failed in his lawsuit against his prison conditions. The 45-year-old Breivik lives in solitary confinement in the Ringerike prison northwest of Oslo under “good material prison conditions” and with a “relatively large degree of freedom” in his everyday life, wrote judge Birgitte Kolrud in the reasons for her judgment handed down on Thursday.
It also said that significant changes to Breivik’s prison conditions appeared “unrealistic” because a change in his risk assessment was unlikely. The Norwegian state justifies Breivik’s strict solitary confinement by saying that he still poses an “absolutely extreme risk of violence.” Before the verdict was handed down, Breivik’s lawyer Öystein Storrvik had already told the AFP news agency that he would appeal in the event of defeat.
The attacker has been housed in high-security prisons for twelve years without contact with fellow inmates. In Ringerike he has three private rooms at his disposal: a living room, a work room and a small fitness room. On a floor below, he can also alternately use a kitchen, a TV room, a dining room and a visiting room with another prisoner.
The rooms are equipped with a flat screen TV and a games console. The prison responded to Breivik’s desire for pets by purchasing three budgies.
In Breivik’s argument, the conditions of his detention because of his isolation violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits “inhuman” and “degrading” treatment. The lawsuit states that Breivik suffered psychological suffering as a result of the long period of isolation and is now “at risk of suicide.” His human contacts are largely limited to exchanges with guards, lawyers and a pastor.
His lawyer Storrvik also believes that Breivik’s right to correspondence granted by Article 8 of the Convention has been violated; he had called for less strict rules for his client’s correspondence.
Breivik had already sued the Norwegian state in the past over his prison conditions. In 2016 he was successful with a similar lawsuit in a court in Oslo. However, higher courts overturned the verdict and the European Court of Human Rights dismissed his case as “inadmissible”.
In the proceedings in which the verdict was handed down, the representative of the Norwegian state stated that Breivik was still just as dangerous as he was at the time of the attack due to his ideology and his “propensity for limitless violence”, among other things.
The Norwegian state argues that Breivik’s isolation is proportionate and justified given the danger he poses. The prison conditions are necessary to protect society, the other inmates, the guards and Breivik himself.
On July 22, 2011, Breivik first detonated a car bomb in the Oslo government district and then carried out a massacre in a summer camp of the youth organization of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party on the island of Utøya. The terrorist attacks, with a total of 77 deaths, are considered by far the worst acts of violence in Norway’s post-war period.
Breivik, who has long called himself Fjotolf Hansen, was sentenced in 2012 to what was then the maximum sentence in Norway: 21 years of preventive detention with a minimum period of ten years. In contrast to a normal prison sentence, detention means that the length of the sentence can be extended every five years. Theoretically, Breivik could remain behind bars until his death, even though the Norwegian legal system does not allow for a life sentence. At the end of the minimum period, Breivik had applied for early release from prison, but his application failed in court at the beginning of 2022.
