Why the Mistreatment?

Kristina Wingfield
November 23, 2012
Soc1010
Article Review #2
“Why The Mistreatment?”
In this article self-confessed Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik describes his prison conditions as “degrading and deplorable.” The 33-year-old right-wing fanatic killed 77 people in twin attacks last year in Norway's worst peacetime massacre to date. He detonated a car bomb outside government offices in Oslo killing eight people and then drove to the island of Utoya where he massacred 69 more people in a shooting spree at the youth summer camp. Obviously a large amount of victims were children. He proclaims himself an anti-Muslim militant and expresses no guilt. According to the police, no affiliations to any such group have been discovered.
The Oslo District Court found Breivik guilty of terrorism and premeditated murder for the   attacks. He was only given a 21-year prison sentence that can be extended if he's considered a threat. This sentence in itself I would call a grave injustice for the family, but even worse this mass murder thinks the conditions in which he lives under serving time at the Ila Prison are not suitable and unjust. I believe its pretty safe to say the parents of the children he murdered would believe there was a lot of unjust in what he did.
October 15th 2012 Breivik wrote a 27-page letter addressed to prison officials saying he felt as if he was in a “mini Abu-Gharib.” He claims there is only so much he can take. He accused prison officials of trying to provoke him to commit suicide. He says being watched while he brushes his teeth and shaves gives him an unfair sense of being rushed, and believes prison officials giving him only a rubber “stab-free” pen to write with is an outrage. He goes on to cite other examples of the cruel mistreatment he is enduring such as not being able to mop his cell when he’d like or being watched as he swallows his vitamins.
Brievik claims his horrible conditions are out of vengefulness of his actions by...