Norway's Human Rights Justice System

"According to Norwegian law he has a right now to go before a judge." 

"He emphasizes that right. And his motivation for doing so is difficult for me to have an opinion on."

"According to the law there is no obligation that you have to be remorseful."

"So it is not a legal main point. Absolutely the legal problem is whether he is dangerous."

Øystein Storrvik, Breivik’s defense lawyer

 

"The only thing I am afraid of is if he has the opportunity to talk freely and convey his extreme views to people who have the same mindset."

"I think personally it is absurd he has this possibility. I think he is ridiculous, but you have to remember that him having all this attention will be hard for the survivors and the parents and some people can be re-traumatized."

Lisbeth Kristine Røyneland, head, family and survivors support group

Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik arrives in court on the first day of a hearing where he is seeking parole, in Skien, Norway, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022. (Ole Berg-Rusten/NTB scanpix via AP)

It's questionable whether a man with expressed fascist views who set out to commit a mass atrocity, could be any more notorious than Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik. The world read in horror of his murderous exploit in 2011 after he had planned to execute a brutal plan of mass murder where he began by setting off a car bomb in Oslo outside government headquarters where the blast killed eight people outright, wounding dozens of innocent bystanders in the process. That bloody event was just the start, he went on to complete the major part of his plan.

 

Driving to a recreational island where a leftist political group, the Labour Party, was holding a youth event at a summer camp he opened fire, shooting at defenceless people, mostly teens desperate to escape the nightmare that had suddenly erupted on an idyllic day of togetherness in recreation and politics where the man known as Norway's mass killer, took the lives of sixty-nine fellow Norwegians. Because from the perspective of his fascist ideology they practised a deplorable political agenda.

He was arrested and stood trial for his unspeakably evil act of war against decency, law and order. Norway's social culture, reflected in its laws, saw this mass murderer imprisoned in conditions that few other countries' prisons reflected. An obvious belief in redemption that included an morally unscrupulous sadist. He had a nicely furnished 'cell' that might equal hotel accommodations elsewhere in the country; proffered respect for his 'human rights' denied to others by his terrorist act of obliteration of human life.

He had the audacity in 2016 to sue the government that was treating him with kid gloves of understanding and hope for time to correct his mode of thought and execution of fascist 'justice'. Claiming isolation from other prisoners and frequent strip searches violated his human rights, initially he won his case. Somehow good sense and justice prevailed and the verdict was subsequently overturned in 2017. In fact, had he not been kept in solitary confinement, his life might have been forfeit, with other prisoners conducting jungle justice on the conscienceless slaughterer of youth.

Terrified youngsters hid in the woods, with some jumping into the water to escape the hail of bullets   AFP

The psychiatrist who had followed Breivik since 2012, Randi Rosenqvist, expressed her professional opinion in saying she could "not detect great changes in Breivik's functioning" from his original criminal trial to his current presentation. He had been convicted of terrorist acts, having been found criminally sane when a court rejected the prosecution's claim that he had been psychotic.

Having served a decade in prison for his horrific, planned and executed murder spree, he presented himself in court at a parole hearing to decide whether he might be released from prison. His appearance was as deliberately provocative as his acts of bloody carnage. With shaved head, a black suit bearing fascist messages, he made a white supremacist sign, then raised his right arm in that abhorrent Nazi salute, entering court.

 

Signs he carried read "Nazi-Civil-War", among other slogans. He blamed the commission of  his crimes on online radicalization through a network of leaderless far-right extremists. It was those online contacts he attributed to having motivated his attacks. He said, incredibly, "I was brainwashed". He quite evidently knows his civil rights under Norway's laws.

 

He was given the maximum 21-year sentence in 2012, on his conviction. The sentence came complete with a rarely-used clause within the Norwegian justice system; he can be held indefinitely should he continue to be considered a danger to society. The clause, however, gives him the right under the law to demand a parole hearing after a decade of detention. Which offers  him the opportunity for annual parole hearings enabling him to publicly.air his murderously pernicious ideology. 

Locals gathered boats near the island to try and help those jumping into the water to escape  AFP