NORWEGIAN MASS MURDERER Anders Behring Breivik has said he is ready to go on hunger strike until he dies, if he is not treated better in prison.
The right-wing extremist, who killed 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in 2011, is serving a 21-year sentence that can be extended if he is still considered a danger to society.
News site Nettavisen reported receiving an “open letter” addressed to various media outlets and penal authorities in which the 36-year-old complains that the conditions of his detention have become even stricter since 2 September.
“Unless the 02/09/15 escalation is reversed, I will eventually continue a hunger strike until death,” Nettavisen quotes him as saying in the letter.
According to The Local, Breivik’s lawyer Øystein Storrvik told local news site Dagbladet:
I can confirm that there is less of the little that was. Total isolation from other people has been maintained, while his movements are confined to a smaller space. He also has less time with officers.
He writes that he is going on hunger strike until death. He writes that he can not bear anymore.
In July, Breivik was controversially admitted to a political science degree course through the University of Oslo, but his latest letter indicates he has dropped out.
“The decision about the drastic deterioration of prison conditions forced me to drop out of my studies, which in turn means that I will lose my place at the University,” The Local reports.
Breivik, who has described his solitary confinement as a form of “torture”, exhausted his legal options last year when police closed their preliminary investigation into his complaint.
Letters to the media are now his only means of protesting about his treatment in Skien prison in southeast Norway.
In January 2014, he wrote to AFP with a list of 12 demands that included an upgrade of his PlayStation 2 games console to a PlayStation 3.
He has repeatedly warned that he may go on a hunger strike over his treatment, but has yet to do so.
Norwegian authorities do not usually comment on conditions of detention.
Citing opposition to multiculturalism and what he called a “Muslim invasion”, Breivik killed eight people in a bombing in Oslo on 22 July, 2011.
He then shot 69 others, most of them teenagers, who were at a Labour Party summer camp on the island of Utoya.
Contains reporting by AFP.
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