Hitler salute, propaganda… Ten years only after having killed 77 people in Norway, the Norwegian right-wing terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, multiplied the outbursts, this Tuesday on the first day of a procedure for requesting release.
If the outcome of the procedure, relocated for security reasons to the gymnasium of the Skien prison (south) where he is imprisoned, seems to be a foregone conclusion, survivors and relatives of the victims feared that Anders Breivik would make it an ideological platform .
“Candidate for Parliament for the Nazi Movement”
At 42, Breivik confirmed their fears: shaved head and neat goatee, he entered with a sign “Stop your genocide against our white nations” in English on his briefcase and his dark suit, addressed journalists with political remarks then gave a Nazi salute as the three judges arrived. To the magistrates, he presented himself as a “candidate for Parliament for the Nazi movement”. Survivors and families of the victims reacted strongly to the attention given to him, the three-day procedure being broadcast in full with a slight delay by certain media.
“Just because it’s ‘scandalous’ or ‘painful’ doesn’t mean I think Breivik shouldn’t be shown on TV,” tweeted Elin L’Estrange, who survived the attacks. “It’s because he is a symbol of the far right who has already inspired several other mass killings.” On July 22, 2011, Breivik detonated a bomb near the government headquarters in Oslo, killing eight people and then killing 69 others, mostly teenagers, by opening fire on a Labor Youth summer camp on the island of Utøya. In 2012, he was sentenced to 21 years in prison with the possibility of extension, accompanied by a minimum sentence of ten years – the maximum at the time. “As in any other rule of law, a convict has the right to apply for parole and Breivik has decided to make use of this right,” said his lawyer, Øystein Storrvik.
Test for the rule of law
In a country that had not seen such violent crime since the Second World War, the request for parole has, in the general opinion, no chance of succeeding. But it is seen as a test that the rule of law – which Breivik had tried to destroy – must overcome by treating the extremist like any other litigant. “It is a hardship for all of us that a person who has killed children, hunted down people who were fleeing in order to kill them and who shot people who were pleading for their lives, also benefits from the liberal aspects of justice “wrote the popular newspaper on Tuesday Verdens Gang in an editorial.
“He must have the rights that a rule of law gives him. Not for his own good, but for ours. No terrorist should be able to change our model of governance and the legal rights that apply to all Norwegian citizens,” he stressed. In 2016, Breivik, who has three cells in prison, a television with DVD player and game console and a typewriter, succeeded in having the State condemned for “inhuman” and “degrading” treatment in reason for keeping him apart from the other detainees. The judgment was overturned on appeal.
Misuse of justice?
In courtrooms or in letters, Anders Breivik has in the past said he renounced violence, even comparing himself to Nelson Mandela, but he never expressed any credible remorse. “He has in no way distanced himself from the mass murder he has committed and which he considers totally legitimate,” argued Tore Bjørgo, director of the Center for Research on Right-wing Extremism (C -REX) from the University of Oslo. The morning was devoted to the reading of the judgment of 2012, with the long reading of the names of the victims and the circumstances of their death, and to legal considerations.
Impassive as usual, Breivik was called to order by judge Dag Bjørvik when, in the middle of the hearing, he again waved his sign. Upstream, the support group for the families of the victims had said “encourage to place as little attention as possible on the terrorist and his message”. “I find it rather absurd that he is allowed to receive so much attention by asking for his release after only ten years,” association president Lisbeth Kristine Røyneland told NRK radio on Friday. Breivik inspired other attacks, including that of Christchurch in New Zealand in 2019, and plans for attacks around the world.