Today, as he has every day for the past eight months, Anders Behring Breivik will sit down to a wholesome breakfast of porridge or home-made brown bread served with either cheese or ham, and a jug of black coffee.
And, as he has every day since his arrest, he will eat alone.
The man responsible for Norway’s most notorious mass murder is kept apart from the other inmates in Ila, a former Nazi concentration camp turned high-security prison. If they could get near him they might kill him.
Tomorrow, Breivik, who killed 77 people on July 22 last year, will go on trial in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.
The 33-year-old set off a bomb in the centre of the capital that killed eight people and then two hours later went on a shooting rampage on the island of Utoya, killing another 69, many of them teenage members of the Norwegian Labour Party’s youth wing attending a summer camp.
Breivik does not deny his role in the worst peace-time massacre in modern Norwegian history. Nor has he shown a shred of remorse.
In his mind, the killing spree was a necessary PR exercise, designed to draw attention to his extremist views about what he says is the Marxist Islamic takeover of Europe.
In court, he intends to plead not guilty. His lawyers say he will claim he acted in self-defence.
Ila, seven miles outside of Oslo, is where heroes of the Norwegian resistance movement were imprisoned, tortured and, on occasion, executed by the Nazis. No doubt Breivik, who appears to see himself as some sort of freedom fighter, deems it appropriate.
A prisoner as dangerous as he is would normally have been sent to Ringerike, Norway’s highest security prison, but this was ruled out because of its location overlooking Utoya.
Ila is a modestly sized facility with 124 cells, in which two to three guards normally patrol a division made up of 12 cells.
However, surveillance is more stringent if the prisoner is on the highest security level possible – as is the case with Breivik.
After the early breakfast he then undertakes his regular exercise regime in his gym, where he has a treadmill.
Breivik enjoys a ‘suite’ of three adjoining 86 sq ft cells. One is a bedroom, one the gym and the third has a computer – without internet access – and serves as a study.
Randi Rosenqvist, a court psychiatrist who has assessed Breivik’s mental health, has said he has compared his time in prison with being in ‘kindergarten’.
Indeed, the leniency with which he is being treated has outraged some in Norway but is, in fact, entirely in keeping with the country’s penal system, one of the most ‘progressive’ in Europe. The focus is on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
After a brisk work-out, Breivik settles down to read the newspapers. Once he has caught up with the news and the latest on his upcoming trial, he either plays a computer game – only non-violent games are allowed – or relaxes in front of a DVD or a television show.
He has access to a family package of 15 television channels. In 2009 prisoners campaigned for, and were granted, access to legal pornography in their cells. He also has a room-service bell which he can ring to have cigarettes delivered to him.
After lunch, the killer is allowed a spell of fresh air in an enclosed yard. The precise schedule is kept fluid for security reasons.
Most days Breivik is questioned by investigators and, until recently, psychiatrists. There is usually some contact with his lawyers.
He is also allowed to write letters, a privilege he exercised to the full last month in a 38-page open letter to three Norwegian news websites.
Being diagnosed as a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic by two court-appointed psychiatrists – Synne Sorheim and Torgeir Husby – was ‘the ultimate humiliation’, he wrote. The Norwegian media and families of the victims campaigned for a second psychiatric report.
The new analysis, presented last week, concluded that Breivik has a narcissistic personality disorder but that he is sane and is highly likely to commit similar violent atrocities again if given the chance.
Key attributes of someone with such a disorder are that they feel special and chosen, and demonstrate a clear lack of empathy.
In his letter, Breivik claims he practises Japanese ‘Bushido’ meditation daily to stop himself feeling anything, and that he has practised this for many years.
After letter-writing, it is dinner. Breivik can expect to be served typical Norwegian fare such as meatballs with gravy and potatoes, or cod.
Following dinner, he talks to his lawyers or writes. Those who have observed him say he sleeps soundly at night.
He is allowed to receive visitors but he has had none. His father, a Norwegian diplomat who divorced his mother when Breivik was a baby, claims not to have spoken to his son for ten years and has expressed disgust at his behaviour.
Until shortly before the attacks Breivik lived in an Oslo apartment with his mother, Wenche Behring.
She has been described as a ‘friendly’ woman who doted on her son. However, in the rambling 1,500-page ‘manifesto’ Breivik published online before the attacks, he declared that she had ‘the intellectual capacity of a ten-year-old’.
Since the massacre, she has been undergoing psychiatric treatment for shock. She has said she never wants to see her son again and has refused to visit him.
The trial is expected to last for ten weeks. Breivik’s lead counsel is Geir Lippestad.
The killer specifically asked for Lippestad, who once defended a neo-Nazi accused of murder, Ole Nicolai Kvisler. Lippestad has revealed that his initial reaction when he was asked to defend Breivik was to refuse, but he says he realised equal rights for all was ‘a vital brick in the wall of democracy’.
However, he recently told French newspaper Le Monde: ‘I feel I have lost my soul in this case. I hope to get it back once it’s over – and that it will be in the same condition as before.’
There is speculation that Breivik could eventually be jailed in Halden Prison, Norway’s second largest.
With no bars on any of the windows, it has been said to be the world’s most luxurious prison, boasting facilities such as a climbing wall, a state-of-the-art recording studio for budding musicians, private bathrooms and flatscreen TVs in the bedrooms.
Inmates can even have access to their own personal trainer.
But there is every reason to believe that after the trial, Breivik will appeal to a higher court in a bid to drag out the legal process.
The killer wants as much attention as he can get. And that, at least, seems guaranteed.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129914/Last-year-Anders-Breivik-killed-77-people-s-room-service-suite-Japanese-meditation.html#ixzz1s7U5gHRz
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