Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage in 2011, was in court on Tuesday for a parole hearing.

It was the far-right extremist's second bid for freedom after spending more than a decade behind bars.

Breivik, 45, who is serving a maximum 21-year sentence, is eligible under Norwegian law for a parole hearing after 10 years in prison.

He has been held in isolation since he began serving his prison sentence in 2012 and has argued several times that his treatment amounts to inhumane punishment under the European Convention on Human Rights. Each time courts have rejected his claims.

As he arrived at the court, Breivik, dressed in a black suit, had the letter Z shaved on the side of his head — a symbol seen on Russian tanks and other military vehicles in Ukraine and embraced by supporters of the war — and was holding a poster with a political message.

The authorities have said Breivik's parole request should be rejected because there is still a “qualified and real” risk that he will commit another serious violent crime if he is released, the Norwegian news agency NTB reported from the hearing.

Prosecutor Hulda Olsen Karlsdottir said Breivik has not changed his ideological thinking or his political position. Authorities in Norway have insisted Breivik has the same rights as any other prisoner, arguing that treating him differently would undermine the principles that underpin Norwegian society, including the rule of law and freedom of speech.

Two years ago, Breivik was transferred to Ringerike prison, where he is held in a two-story complex with a kitchen, dining room and TV room with an Xbox, several armchairs and black and white pictures of the Eiffel Tower on the wall. He also has a fitness room with weights, a treadmill and a rowing machine, while three parakeets fly around the complex.

The parole application is being heard in a makeshift courtroom in the Ringerike prison gymnasium where a similar hearing was held in January 2022. It was not known when a ruling will be made.

Breivik was convicted in 2012 of mass murder and terrorism for a bombing that killed eight people in a government building in Oslo, and a shooting massacre on Utøya island where he gunned down 69 people at a holiday camp for youth activists from the center-left Labor Party.

News from © The Associated Press, 2024