Neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, who spread death across Norway in 2011 by killing 77 people, mostly young people, is suing the Norwegian state in a bid to escape solitary confinement in prison.

Breivik, who killed eight people in a car bomb attack in Oslo and 69 others at a youth summer camp, says his detention conditions violate his human rights.

Norway’s Ministry of Justice has ruled that he should be held separately from the prison population for security reasons.

Breivik’s lawyers told the court on Monday that the 44-year-old no longer wants to live.

“He’s been isolated for about 12 years… He lives in a completely locked-down world,” his lawyer told the court on Monday.

“He doesn’t want to be alive anymore,” she added.

Breivik is also asking the court to lift restrictions on his correspondence with the outside world.

Breivik was sentenced to 21 years – the maximum sentence a Norwegian court can impose, although it can be extended for as long as he is considered a threat – for the attacks on July 22, 2011.

He has challenged the terms of his sentence in the past, winning part of his human rights case against the Norwegian state in 2016, before it was overturned the following year.

The 44-year-old is currently serving time in a special section of Ringerike prison – located on the shores of the lake surrounding the island of Utoya, where he shot and killed 69 people.

Many of the dead in Utoja were teenagers who were members of the youth wing of the Norwegian Labor Party, AUF.

Breivik’s attacks remain Norway’s worst peacetime atrocity.