- Title: Norway appeals human rights ruling involving Anders Breivik
- Date: 6th January 2017
- Summary: SKIEN, NORWAY (MARCH 15, 2016) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF SKIEN PRISON SIGN READING (Norwegian): "CORRECTIONAL SERVICE SKIEN PRISON" POLICE REMOVING BREIVIK'S HANDCUFFS / BREIVIK LIFTING ARM IN NAZI SALUTE AND SITTING DOWN AT DESK
- Embargoed: 20th January 2017 16:45
- Keywords: Oslo bomb shootings Norway Anders Behring Breivik anniversary Utoeya island
- Location: OSLO, UTOEYA ISLAND AND SKIEN, NORWAY
- City: OSLO, UTOEYA ISLAND AND SKIEN, NORWAY
- Country: Norway
- Topics: Crime/Law/Justice,Crime
- Reuters ID: LVA00A5XZ32VB
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDIT CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES
Norway is appealing on Tuesday (January 10) against a legal ruling which found the state had violated the human rights of mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.
Breivik was sentenced for killing 77 people in twin attacks in 2011.
The ruling in April last year, which took many by surprise, found that the killer had been subjected to strip searches, woken up hourly by guards for long periods and that the authorities had done little to alleviate the impact of his solitary confinement.
The verdict said the Norwegian state had broken Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, pointing to the fact that Breivik is spending 22 to 23 hours a day alone in his cell.
Breivik sued to end his isolation from other inmates and from outsiders who are not professionals. He had previously complained that his prison conditions amounted to torture and threatened to go on hunger strike if they were not improved.
In a surprise judgement, Oslo's district court ruled in favour of Breivik and described his solitary confinement as a "completely locked world".
Breivik was found guilty of a shocking and unprecedented assault on central Oslo. He set off a car bomb, which killed eight people and injured some 209 others when it exploded outside the Norwegian prime minister's office on July 22, 2011.
While police and rescue services arrived at the scene, Breivik drove out to a youth camp on Utoeya, an island in a lake 40 km (25 miles) outside the capital, where the youth wing of the centre-left Labour Party was holding its annual gathering.
Breivik was dressed as a policeman, claiming to have come to protect the camp, only to pull out a gun and shoot children from point-blank range with what witnesses described as a "joyous battle cry". Over the next hour-and-a-half, he shot dead 69 teenagers and adults and hurt 33 others.
In the chaos that ensued, teenagers threw themselves into the sub-zero waters of the island's lake in an attempt to flee, others tried to hide under corpses or behinds rocks in the coves around the island.
In court, Breivik said he was trying to protect Norway from Muslim immigration and multiculturalism, and called the teenage activists on Utoeya "traitors to the Norwegian nation". He said his only regret was that he did not do more damage.
He also said his victims were brainwashed "cultural Marxists" whose immigration policies adulterated pure Norwegian blood and risked leading to a civil war with Muslims.
Police said Breivik ran out of ammunition during his shooting spree and surrendered after a SWAT team landed on the island. He has been held in isolation ever since.
Breivik's court hearing began on April 16, 2012, after he was charged under a paragraph in Norway's anti-terror law that refers to violent acts intended to disrupt key government functions or spread fears in the population.
Breivik entered the Oslo court in handcuffs. He smirked several times as the cuffs were removed, put his right fist on his heart then extended his hand in salute. He pleaded not guilty. He listened impassively for hours as prosecutors read out an indictment detailing how he massacred the teenagers.
The prosecution told the court how Breivik shot most of his victims several times, often using the first shot to take down his target then following up with a shot to the head.
Breivik only became tearful while watching a movie of still pictures accompanied by text of his vision of evils of "multiculturalism" and "Islamic demographic warfare" in a manifesto he called "2083 - A European Declaration of Independence".
The self-confessed mass killer was born in Oslo on February 13, 1979.
His parents divorced when he was one year old and he grew up with his mother, a nurse, and his step-father, a Norwegian army officer.
On August 24, 2012, a Norwegian court delivered its verdict in the ten-week trial. Breivik was sentenced to the maximum time in prison of 21 years when judges declared him sane enough to answer for the murder of 77 people.
He was later transferred to a jail in Skien, 130 km (80 miles) to the southwest of Oslo, from a prison on the outskirts of the capital. He can be kept in prison indefinitely if he is deemed a threat to society.
His mother was the only person other than his lawyer allowed to visit him until she died of cancer in 2013.
In August 7, 2015, Utoeya Island reopened, four years after the attack. A circle of steel, symbolising eternity, engraved with the name and age of almost all the victims, has been erected on the island as a memorial.
The building that housed the prime minister's office has remained an empty shell, decked in a dirtied white cloth, while the public debated whether to raze the building or restore it. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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