Breivik ready for female company after court win
Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik could be allowed visits from a female admirer, after a court ruled that his human rights had been violated by being kept in isolation.
The self-declared Nazi, 37, claimed that his health was suffering from being locked up alone without seeing even guards for at least 22 hours every day.
Breivik planted a bomb in Oslo that killed eight people, then shot dead 69 people attending a Labour party youth camp on the island of Utoya near the capital, in July 2011.
His lawyers welcomed the ruling and called for his isolation to be eased. This means he could be allowed visits from a Swedish woman who calls herself his girlfriend but who has been refused permission to meet him.
The woman, known only as Victoria, has exchanged hundreds of letters with Breivik and is believed to be the woman he speaks with when he is allowed to use the phone. She encountered him before the massacre, while playing computer games online, and said last year that she was in love with him.
The only person other than prison staff or doctors to have entered Breivik’s cell since he was convicted in 2012 was his terminally ill mother in 2013. Prison and legal professionals who visit remain behind a glass panel.
Breivik complained that his captivity amounted to inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. When he brought the case in March, he complained that cold coffee and microwaved meals were ‘‘worse than waterboarding’’.
Marius Emberland, one of the lawyers representing Norway, said they would consider an appeal.