Three rooms, three parrots, one Xbox: Anders Behring Breivik’s trial against the Norwegian state over his imprisonment brings to light conditions of detention that would make prisoners around the world blush with envy.

From 2022, Breivik is serving his sentence in the Ringerike maximum security prison, on the shores of the lake where Utoya, the island where he killed 69 people, most of them teenagers, on July 22, 2011, is blown up. bomb in Oslo, killing eight people.

The 44-year-old has at his disposal three rooms -a living area, a study area and an exercise area – upstairs. Downstairs he has at his disposal a kitchen, a TV room with a game console, a dining room and a visiting area, which he shares, not at the same time, with another prisoner.

“Breivik has much more space than any other inmate in Ringerike prison,” prison director Erik Bergstedt told Norwegian news agency NTB in December.

Although the decor is a bit plainthe rooms are very well equipped with lots of exercise equipment, with a large flat screen TV, lots of armchairs to play Xbox with the guards and posters of the Eiffel Tower.

Despite this defiant leniency, Breivik, who was sentenced in 2012 to a 21-year prison term that could be extended indefinitely, filed a lawsuit against the Norwegian state protesting his detention.

The authorities are trying to push me to commit suicide, he said yesterday in tears.

Although he is used to challenges – in 2014, in a letter to AFP, he threatened to go on hunger strike if he did not get, among other things, a Playstation 3 instead of a PS2 – he does not complain about the comforts he has.

In his lawsuit against the Norwegian state, he states that his isolation for almost 11 years violates Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits “inhuman and degrading punishment”, as well as the Article of the Convention that guarantees the right to correspondence .

“Tower;”…

“They have built a tower around me to wall me in,” he said yesterday. “I’m not a hamster, I need real human relationships.”

His isolation is only relative: apart from contacts with the guards with whom he can play cards, cook or socialize, Breivik can regularly see a pastor, a physiotherapist, a psychiatrist or a Red Cross visitor with a dog he can pet.

Breivik himself ended contact with a visitor appointed by the authorities, but he is allowed, for one hour a week, to meet another prisoner, also chosen, with whom he can make waffles, for example.

Generally, these meetings take place around a table, which he calls “Putin’s table” because, for security reasons, guards sit between the two prisoners.

… or maybe a palace?

In addition to the various activities (basketball, walks, library…), the authorities have entrusted him with three parrots to meet his need for a companion animal.

“I had asked for a dog, a goat or a dwarf pig with whom you can form empathic relationships, which can be a good surrogate solution for people in isolation,” Breivik told the court.

“But parrots, it’s better than nothing.”

Large mammals “are not practical in a maximum security wing,” replied Norwegian state attorney Kristoffer Nerland. “And also, the veterinary authorities would object.”

In the networking media, comments refer to imprisonment in a hotel or palace. “Others are taking security guards hostage for a pizza,” wrote a Swede on X (Twitter).

“The Norwegian system is the way it is, but as a mom whose daughter he killed, it’s hard to see him complaining about his nice apartment,” commented Lisbet Christine Reineland, mother of 18-year-old Zine, who was murdered in Utoja.

“But at least he’s behind bars and he’ll never get out again.”