SHARE
COPY LINK

BREIVIK

Fellow inmates want Breivik out of solitary

Inmates at Norway’s Skein prison are backing the campaign of far-Right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik to be released from solitary confinement, although only because they feel his treatment draws resources away from them.

Fellow inmates want Breivik out of solitary
Skien prison, where inmates are calling for Anders Behring Breivik to be released from solitary confinement. Photo: Tor Erik Schroder / NTB scanpix
A representative of inmates at the prison told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that the prison had seen cutbacks ever since Breivik was moved there from Ila prison outside Oslo. 
 
“What people are talking about the most is the economics of it. It affects all of the other inmates,” he told Norway's state broadcaster NRK. “He sits there; he has an entire cellblock to himself, with five empty cells around him. Everywhere else, there are cut-backs. He should be serve with the others. He is an ordinary prisoner.”
 
Breivik was sentenced to 21 years in prison In August 2012,  more than a year after his twin terror attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utøya left 77 dead and more than 300 wounded.  
 
Since then, he has repeatedly complained about his prison conditions. He is the only person in the Norwegian prison system to serve his sentence in long-term isolation. 
 
Last week, the his defence lawyer Geir Lippestad revealed that his client was preparing a lawsuit against the government, arguing that “prolonged isolation becomes a form of torture” and is therefore prohibited under European Convention on Human Rights. 
 
In February 2014, Breivik threatened to go on hunger strike if prison authorities did not grant him a long string of demands, including his request for his Playstation 2 to be upgraded to a newer model. 
 
More recently, the Norwegian prison service stopped allowing Breivik  to send and receive letters on the grounds that he had been using his correspondence to try and recruit people to his cause, rather than to build and maintain personal relationships.
 
It is unlikely that the other prisoners at Skien prison would benefit from Breivik’s release into the general population, as the prison gets extra funding to keep Beivik in a high security block. 
 
“He is not kept at the expense of other inmates at the prison in Telemark”, Erling Feste, deputy director of the southern Norway's prison services told NRK. 
 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

COURT

French court orders Twitter to reveal anti-hate speech efforts

A French court has ordered Twitter to give activists full access to all its documents relating to efforts to combat racism, sexism and other forms of hate speech on the social network.

French court orders Twitter to reveal anti-hate speech efforts
Photo: Alastair Pike | AFP

Six anti-discrimination groups had taken Twitter to court in France last year, accusing the US social media giant of “long-term and persistent” failures in blocking hateful comments from the site.

The Paris court ordered Twitter to grant the campaign groups full access to all documents relating to the company’s efforts to combat hate speech since May 2020. The ruling applies to Twitter’s global operation, not just France.

Twitter must hand over “all administrative, contractual, technical or commercial documents” detailing the resources it has assigned to fighting homophobic, racist and sexist discourse on the site, as well as “condoning crimes against humanity”.

The San Francisco-based company was given two months to comply with the ruling, which also said it must reveal how many moderators it employs in France to examine posts flagged as hateful, and data on the posts they process.

The ruling was welcomed by the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF), one of the groups that had taken the social media giant to court.

“Twitter will finally have to take responsibility, stop equivocating and put ethics before profit and international expansion,” the UEJF said in a statement on its website.

Twitter’s hateful conduct policy bans users from promoting violence, or threatening or attacking people based on their race, religion, gender identity or disability, among other forms of discrimination.

Like other social media businesses it allows users to report posts they believe are hateful, and employs moderators to vet the content.

But anti-discrimination groups have long complained that holes in the policy allow hateful comments to stay online in many cases.

French prosecutors on Tuesday said they have opened an investigation into a wave of racist comments posted on Twitter aimed at members of the country’s national football team.

The comments, notably targeting Paris Saint-Germain star Kylian Mbappe, were posted after France was eliminated from the Euro 2020 tournament last week.

France has also been having a wider public debate over how to balance the right to free speech with preventing hate speech, in the wake of the controversial case of a teenager known as Mila.

The 18-year-old sparked a furore last year when her videos, criticising Islam in vulgar terms, went viral on social media.

Thirteen people are on trial accused of subjecting her to such vicious harassment that she was forced to leave school and was placed under police protection.

While President Emmanuel Macron is among those who have defended her right to blaspheme, left-wing critics say her original remarks amounted to hate speech against Muslims.

SHOW COMMENTS