Norway has tried to forget Anders Behring Breivik, the man responsible for the massacre of July 22, 2011, but he does not let us. He has been complaining about poor treatment since the day of his attack. It started just after his arrest, on the island of Utøya, where he shot sixty-nine Labor Party members, most of them teen-agers, after setting off a bomb outside the Prime Minister’s office, which killed eight others. When his bloodied shoes were put in a plastic bag and he was given slippers, he refused to wear them. “I don’t want to be seen in these; they are ridiculous,” he said. Breivik had a little cut on his finger, which he figured had come from a piece of a skull—he remembered something hitting his finger when he shot one teen-ager in the head at close range—and he demanded a bandage. “You’ll get no fucking plasters from me,” a policeman muttered. Breivik said that he would pass out if he did not get a Band-Aid, because he could not afford to lose blood, and refused to continue his interrogation until he received one. He got what he asked for.

Last Wednesday, Breivik won another partial victory, in his legal case against the state. The Oslo district court ruled that his human rights have been violated during his imprisonment for terrorism and mass murder. According to the court, his prison conditions, which include solitary confinement, breach Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits inhumane and degrading treatment.

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