Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Utøya massacre, has filed a lawsuit against the Norwegian government for allegedly violating his fundamental rights during his detention in prison. Breivik is 44 years old and has been in prison since July 2011, when he was arrested after carrying out two separate attacks a few hours apart and killing 77 people in total, including many young supporters of the Norwegian Labor Party who were on holiday summer on the island of Utøya, which is located in a lake not far from Oslo.
Already in 2016 he sued the Norwegian government for the violation of his human rights in solitary confinement. During the trial hearings, Breivik’s lawyer had said that solitary confinement violated the clause of the European Convention on Human Rights which prohibits “degrading or inhuman treatment and punishment”, and explained that the issue was particularly important because Breivik he would likely spend the rest of his life in prison and because solitary confinement was having a detrimental effect on his health.
Initially, an Oslo court ruled in favor of Breivik, but a year later an appeal court overturned the ruling, and the European Court of Human Rights also ruled against him. The first hearing of the new trial will take place on Monday 8 January in Ringerike prison, where Breivik is detained: in total the trial should last five days.
– Read also: Let Utøya go straight