Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, author of a double massacre in Norway in 2011, requested new parole on Tuesday.
AFP
Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, author of a double massacre which left 77 dead in Norway in 2011, requested new parole on Tuesday, most likely doomed to failure.
Under Norwegian law, Breivik, 45, is allowed to apply for early parole once a year, after serving ten years of his sentence.
His first request for parole, in January 2022, was rejected, with the court concluding that there was a “clear risk” that he would return to the behavior that led to the attacks of July 22, 2011.
“He is asking for conditional release, but it is unlikely,” his lawyer Oystein Storrvik admitted to AFP before the opening of the three-day hearing on Tuesday.
Dressed in a black tie suit, Breivik, carrying a sign with political messages, was present at the hearing on Tuesday, which was being held in the gymnasium of Ringerike prison for security reasons.
“If I am given the opportunity to come out, I will be of enormous help to the Norwegian state, and that is something I take very seriously,” he told reporters before the start of the hearing.
The neo-Nazi killer has used his previous court appearances to express his extremist views.
Breivik was sentenced in 2012 to 21 years in prison, the harshest sentence possible at the time in Norway, which can be extended as long as he is considered a threat to society.
He has been held separately from other prisoners in high-security facilities for more than 12 years.
In February 2024, he lost a lawsuit against the Norwegian state for inhumane treatment. The state argued its strict — but comfortable — conditions were justified, saying it still presented an “absolutely extreme risk of completely unbridled violence.”
On July 22, 2011, Breivik first detonated a bomb near the government headquarters in Oslo, killing eight people, then killed 69 other people, most of them teenagers, by opening fire in a summer camp in Oslo. Labor Youth on the island of Utøya.
He said he killed his victims because they adhered to multiculturalism.
His lawyer said psychologists had conducted a thorough assessment of Breivik, for the first time in 12 years, and would present their 109-page report to the court.
Prosecutor Hulda Olsen Karlsdottir told the NTB news agency that the report had not changed her opinion.
“The new assessment has not changed the prosecution’s view on the issue of his release,” she said.
During hearings earlier this year, Breivik said he was depressed. The date for the court’s decision has not yet been set.
(afp)
