Norwegians ignore Breivik hearing
OSLO (Reuters) – Anders Breivik’s massacre of 77 people still haunts Norwegians, yet ever fewer care about the neo-Nazi locked in a cell where his only “friend” is paid to visit.
Most of the 10 seats in an Oslo court for the public to watch a case about his prison conditions have been empty as Breivik sits glumly in a black suit, the first flecks of gray in his beard, appearing by video-link from a high-security jail.
The Norwegian state is appealing against a lower court ruling in 2015 that it breached a ban on “inhuman and degrading treatment” by keeping Breivik, 37, in near-isolation since the 2011 killings.
“He’s being forgotten, step by step... People are kind of done with him,” said Aasne Seierstad, author of One of Us, a book about the 2011 mass murder, the worst in the Nordic nation in modern times.
It is in stark contrast to his criminal trial in 2012, covered by hundreds of reporters. At that time, Norwegians seemed riveted by his every word, horrified that a man who grew up in a peaceful Nordic society could be so radicalized.
“It’s not about him any longer,” Seierstad said, adding that the focus was ever more on helping survivors and relatives of the dead. But even she was surprised at the lack of interest in him during the hearing from January 10 to 18.
In many ways, Norwegians are punishing Breivik by remembering the crime but ignoring the man, giving up trying to understand his unrepentant self-justification.
Norwegians often talk merely of “July 22,” the date of the massacres, or “Utoeya,” the island where he shot dead 69 people, many of them teenagers at a camp of the then-ruling Labour Party, after detonating a bomb in Oslo that killed eight.
The main group for survivors and relatives of the dead has decided not to comment on this week’s case. He won most coverage in Norway on the first day by making a Nazi salute.
In the case, Norway argues that it is too risky to allow Breivik contact with other inmates – he might attack them or they might attack him – and compensates him with a three-room cell with a mini gym, television, newspapers and PlayStation.
Only one visitor calls himself a “friend,” a 48-year-old priest who has met Breivik about 90 times and is paid to talk with him on subjects chosen by Breivik, such as immigration, racism, fascism or Islam.
“It’s not exactly a position I applied for,” the man told the court, asking that he not be named. The two meet separated by a glass wall.