Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik returns to court tomorrow to accuse the Norwegian state of violating his human rights by holding him in isolation.
The right-wing extremist is serving 21 years for the murder of 77 people in a bombing and shooting assault in July 2011.
He accuses the Norwegian state of breaching two clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights, one which prohibits “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” and one which guarantees the right to respect for “private and family life” and “correspondence.”
Since the killings, Breivik, 37, has been held apart from the rest of the prison population and his contacts with the outside world strictly controlled.
His mail is censored by prison officials to prevent him from establishing an “extremist network,” according to authorities, and his visits, which are rare, are almost exclusively with professionals behind a glass partition.
He has previously likened his prison conditions to “torture.”
The proceedings, which are likely to reopen painful wounds for victims’ families, are due to open tomorrow and run until Friday.
For security reasons, they are to be held in the gymnasium of Skien prison, about 100km southwest of Oslo, where Breivik is incarcerated.
Breivik’s lawyer, Oystein Storrvik, said his client was “very stressed due to his isolation.”
“One of his main things to do [in prison] was to study and he has stopped that now, and I feel that is a sign that isolation has been negative to his psychological health,” Storrvik said.
However, the Oslo Attorney General’s office said that Breivik’s prison conditions are “well within the limits of what is permitted” under the Convention.
He has access to three cells — one for living, one for studying and a third for physical exercise — as well as a television, a computer without Internet access and a game console. He is able to prepare his own food and do his own laundry.
“There are limits to his contacts with the outside world, which are of course strict ... but he is not totally excluded from all contact with other people,” said Marius Emberland, a lawyer who is to defend the state at trial, citing Breivik’s contact with penitentiary staff.
Breivik was in August 2012 handed a maximum 21-year sentence for killing eight people in a bomb attack outside a government building in Oslo and then murdering another 69 people, most of them teenagers, in a rampage at a Labour Youth camp on the island of Utoya.
Breivik’s shooting spree lasted 1 hour, 13 minutes as he methodically stalked and killed many of the 600 up-and-coming leaders of Labour, Norway’s dominant political party, which he blamed for the rise of multiculturalism.
His sentence can be extended if he is still considered a danger to society.
In a letter sent to AFP in early 2014, he threatened to go on a hunger strike if his 12 demands were not met. One of them was to be given a Playstation 3 to replace the Playstation 2 put at his disposal.
This time Breivik intends to pursue his case through all available legal channels, Storrvik said.
“If we have to, we will bring it ... to the European Court of Human Rights,” he said.
Ahead of the hearing, both camps have received heavyweight backing.
In November last year, Norway’s human rights point man said Breivik’s prison regimen represented “an elevated risk of inhumane treatment.”
However, according to public broadcaster NRK, doctors who monitor Breivik in prison are expected to testify that he is not suffering from his conditions.
Breivik’s own testimony in his lawsuit, due on Wednesday, is not to be filmed out of respect for the families of the victims, and to prevent Breivik from sending any signals to supporters.
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