Norway Gunman to Leave Solitary Confinement
Norwegian extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who has confessed to twin attacks in July that killed 77 people, will be allowed out of solitary confinement but will still be subjected to heavy restrictions, police said Thursday.
"We will not extend the solitary confinement beyond October 17," police prosecutor Christian Hatlo told reporters.
Since his arrest on July 22, Behring Breivik has been held in total isolation -- something he has described as a form of "sadistic torture" -- amid fears he might try to contact possible accomplices and get them to destroy evidence.
Police have meanwhile become increasingly confident that the 32-year-old rightwing extremist acted alone.
"For every day that passes we are increasingly sure," Hatlo said, adding "we have found nothing to suggest that accomplices exist even though we refuse to definitively rule out the possibility."
Police have therefore decided to stop requesting that Oslo's district court grant them extensions of Behring Breivik's solitary confinement, something they have had to do every four weeks since his arrest.
It is also rare that solitary confinement is enforced longer than 12 weeks, which will be the case for Behring Breivik on Monday.
However, his release from solitary confinement at the high-security Ila prison will basically be a technicality, since he will remain fully isolated.
"He will not be allowed to receive mail or visitors and he will have no access to media," Hatlo told AFP.
"He will also be kept apart from other prisoners for his own safety," he said.
According to Norwegian media, a number of prisoners and members of the criminal underworld have vowed to kill Behring Breivik.
As is the case today, Behring Breivik's only contact with the outside world will be limited to prison guards and the chaplain, police detectives and his lawyer, Geir Lippestad.
Lippestad meanwhile said Thursday he intended to meet with the prison administration to request a softening of his client's conditions.
"At one point or another, he will have to be able to have contact with other people and to benefit from the same conditions as the other prisoners," he told public broadcaster NRK.
"I will therefore ask that he be allowed to meet the other inmates," he said.
Behring Breivik will leave solitary confinement near Oslo next week, but he will remain in custody until at least November 14, when a judge is expected to announce whether or not to extend his custody further.
He is expected to remain in preventive custody until his trial begins, probably during the first half of next year.
He has admitted setting off a car bomb outside the government offices in Oslo on July 22, killing eight people, before going on a shooting rampage on the nearby island of Utoeya where the ruling Labor Party's youth wing was hosting a summer camp.
Sixty-nine people, mostly teens, died in the shooting massacre and police have said they found 186 empty shell casings strewn around the island.
In a manifesto he published on the Internet just before the attacks, Behring Breivik said he was on a "crusade" against Islam and professed his hatred for Western-style democracy, saying it had spawned the multicultural society he loathed.
Source: Agence France Presse
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