Anders Breivik to testify in prison isolation lawsuit against Norway

Anders Breivik, the man responsible for Norway's worst peacetime atrocity, is due to testify in court today in an attempt to end his prison isolation.

The far-right fanatic, who killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting spree in 2011, received Norway's "most severe sentence at the time", reported The Associated Press: detention for 21 years, with a provision to hold him indefinitely if he is still considered dangerous.

His lawyers told the court on Monday that Breivik's isolation for more than a decade has left him in a "locked world", suicidal and dependent on the anti-depression medication Prozac. They argued that Norway is breaching the European Convention on Human Rights, including sections saying no one should be subject to "torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".

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Breivik, 44, who has changed his name to Fjotolf Hansen, is also asking the court to lift restrictions on his correspondence with the outside world.

He failed in a similar attempt in 2016 and 2017 to lift his isolation, when his appeal was ultimately rejected by the European Court of Justice.

Lawyers representing the ministry of justice maintain he must be kept apart from the rest of the prison population because of the continuing security threat he poses, and have argued his prison conditions are "significantly better" than they were.

Pictures from a visit last month by news agency NTB showed how he spends his time in a dedicated section of Ringerike prison. It includes a kitchen, a TV room and a bathroom. He is allowed to keep three parakeets as pets and let them fly freely in the area, NTB reported.

Reuters reported that some journalists had asked Judge Birgitte Kolrud to let them broadcast Breivik's testimony, "but she ruled against that last week saying there was a risk his statement could become a platform for his views rather than testimony about his jail conditions".