Mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik on Tuesday made a Nazi salute at the opening of his lawsuit against Norway over his prison conditions, confirming fears he would use the opportunity to grandstand his extremist views.
Despite his theatrical entrance, Breivik's lawyer Oystein Storrvik insisted the suit, which contends his five-year prison isolation constitutes "inhuman" treatment, was necessary because his client would likely be spending the rest of his life behind bars.
"This case is about something much more than what many people think, just a lawsuit brought to allow Breivik back into the spotlight to explain himself," Storrvik said.
"This case is simply about his detention conditions for the rest of his life," he said in the makeshift courtroom set up in the gymnasium of Skien prison where the killer is being held, where a climbing wall, two basketball hoops and exercise bars were visible.
Breivik is serving a maximum 21-year sentence for killing eight people in a bomb attack outside a government building in Oslo in July 2011, then murdering another 69 people, most of them teenagers, in a rampage at a Labour Youth camp on the island of Utoya. His prison sentence can be extended if he is still considered a danger to society.
Sporting a shaved head and wearing a dark suit and white shirt, Breivik entered the courtroom, and, once his handcuffs were removed, he turned toward the media and extended his right arm in a Hitler-style salute.
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