The trial, held from Monday, January 8, to Friday, January 12, in the gymnasium of Ringerike prison, northwest of Oslo, will be remembered for the chilling findings of the Norwegian intelligence services. Twelve and a half years after killing 77 people on July 22, 2011, in a bomb blast outside the Oslo government headquarters, followed by a shootout on the island of Utoya, home to more than 700 young Labor activists, 44-year-old extremist Anders Behring Breivik was deemed to be as "dangerous" as ever.

Sentenced in 2012 to 21 years' imprisonment with the possibility of extension – the country's maximum sentence – this was the second time the terrorist has accused the Norwegian state of violating the European Convention on Human Rights by keeping him in solitary confinement. At a trial in 2016, a lower court partially ruled in his favor. A year later, however, his appeal was rejected by a court which ruled that his conditions of imprisonment were fully justified.

For the past two years, Breivik has been incarcerated in Ringerike prison, just across the fjord from the island of Utoya. He is allocated an entire section of the prison on two floors, including a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, as well as a gym, a TV room where he can also play computer games, and an outdoor courtyard equipped with a basketball hoop. To break his solitude, he was even allowed to adopt three parakeets.

Breivik claims that his treatment is "inhumane." His relations with the outside world are restricted to a minimum. He has no contact with his fellow inmates, receives virtually no visits except from his lawyer or psychiatrists, and his mail is strictly controlled. He also complains about not being able to use the dating app Tinder. "I feel like the government's intention is to try to drive me to suicide," he declared on the second day of the trial, before bursting into tears.

"Is it possible to impose a life sentence and, at the same time, cut off all human contact during the execution of the sentence?" questioned his lawyer, Oystein Storrvik, according to whom his client is "suicidal" and "suffering from depression."

But the experts who took the stand disputed the diagnosis. His tears? Psychiatrist Janne Gudim Hermansen, who met him on 21 occasions, doubted their "credibility." As for his three suicide attempts in 2018, "it doesn't give the impression that he had a real desire to die," reacted psychologist Inni Rein.

Once again, Norway, still traumatized by the attacks of July 22, 2011, was faced with the difficult question of how to deal with the man who committed the worst mass murder on its soil since the Second World War, in the name of a deadly far-right ideology, without making the slightest concession to the principles of the rule of law.

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