justice rejects request for release of Anders Behring Breivik

Norwegian justice on Wednesday rejected a new request for conditional release filed by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011, the killer's lawyer told AFP. “It is no surprise that he was not granted parole”said lawyer Øystein Storrvik. “The court noted positive developments at (Anders Behring Breivik) over the intervening years”he congratulated himself. During the hearing held in November in the gymnasium of Ringerike prison, his client notably reiterated that he now rejects violence.

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring 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 on a summer camp. of Labor Youth on the island of Utøya. The right-wing extremist, now 45 years old, blamed his victims for paving the way for multiculturalism, which he abhors. In 2012, he was sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum sentence at the time, which could be extended as long as he remains considered a threat to society. This sentence carried a minimum of ten years.

Significant personality disorders

Anders Behring Breivik had already been rejected on February 1, 2022, a first request for early parole. The Norwegian judicial system authorizes him to make such a request one year after the final rejection, after exhaustion of appeals, of the previous one, once the minimum period of the sentence imposed has been served. According to the newspaper Aftenposten, which saw the decision rendered in writing on Wednesday by the Norwegian court, the judges considered that Anders Behring Breivik presented the same risk of recidivism as when he received his verdict in 2012.

According to Øystein Storrvik, Anders Behring Breivik will initially appeal the rejection of his request for parole, but the appeal court is not obliged to examine it. As in his previous public appearances, Anders Behring Breivik used the audience to try to convey political messages. Dressed in a black tie suit, he presented himself with his head shaved to form a Z, the symbol used by Russia since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and carrying a sign containing different messages. If they had ruled out a psychotic state, psychiatrists had in a new expertise noted significant personality disorders, depicting an atypical individual who cannot necessarily be trusted.