Anders Behring Breivik

Fjotolf Hansen (born 13 February 1979), better known by his birth name Anders Behring Breivik, is a Norwegian neo-Nazi terrorist.

Breivik was born in Oslo on 13 February 1979, the son of Jens Breivik (born 1935), a civil economist, who worked as a diplomat for the Norwegian Embassy in London and later in Paris, and Wenche Elisabeth Behring (1946–2013), a nursing assistant.

He has a maternal half-sister named Elisabeth, and three paternal half-siblings: Erik, Jan, and Nina.

Breivik began his life in London until the age of one, when his parents divorced.

His family name is Breivik, while Behring, his mother's maiden name, is his middle name and not part of the family name.

His family name comes from Breivika in Hadsel, and means "broad vik" or "broad bay."

At the age of 16 in 1995, Breivik was arrested for spraying graffiti on walls.

He was not chosen for conscription into the Norwegian Armed Forces.

At the age of 20, he joined the anti-immigration Progress Party, and chaired the local Vest Oslo branch of the party's youth organization in 2002.

He joined a gun club in 2005.

He left the Progress Party in 2006.

A company he founded was later declared bankrupt.

He had no declared income in 2009 and his assets were 390,000 kroner (equivalent to $72,063), according to Norwegian tax authority figures.

He financed the terror attacks with a total of €130,000; nine credit cards gave him access to credit.

On the day of the attacks, Breivik emailed a compendium of texts entitled "2083: A European Declaration of Independence", describing his militant ideology.

In them, he stated his opposition to Islam and blamed feminism for a European "cultural suicide."

The text called for the deportation of all Muslims from Europe and Breivik wrote that his main motive for the attacks was to publicize his manifesto.

Two teams of court-appointed forensic psychiatrists examined Breivik before his trial.

The first team diagnosed Breivik with paranoid schizophrenia, but after this initial finding was criticized, a second evaluation concluded that he was not psychotic during the attacks but did have narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder.

He is known primarily for committing the 2011 Norway attacks on 22 July 2011, in which he killed eight people by detonating a van bomb at Regjeringskvartalet in Oslo, and then killed 69 participants of a Workers' Youth League (AUF) summer camp, in a mass shooting on the island of Utøya.

After Breivik was found psychologically competent to stand trial, his criminal trial was held in 2012.

That year, Breivik was found guilty of mass murder, causing a fatal explosion, and terrorism.

Breivik was sentenced to the maximum civilian criminal penalty in Norway, which is 21 years' imprisonment through preventive detention, allowing the possibility of one or more extensions for as long as he is deemed a danger to society.

In 2016, Breivik sued the Norwegian Correctional Service, claiming that his solitary confinement violated his human rights.

The justice system concluded that his rights had not been violated, despite a lower court ruling in 2016.

In 2017, it was reported he had changed his legal name to Fjotolf Hansen.

When Breivik was aged 4, and living in Oslo's Frogner borough, two reports were filed expressing concern about his mental health.

A psychologist in one report made a note of the boy's peculiar smile, suggesting it was not anchored in his emotions but was rather a deliberate response to his environment.

In another report from Norway's National Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (SSBU), concerns were raised about how Breivik was treated by his mother: "[s]he 'sexualised' the young Breivik, hit him, and frequently told him that she wished that he were dead."

In the report, Wenche Behring is described as "a woman with an extremely difficult upbringing, borderline personality disorder and an all-encompassing if only partially visible depression" who "projects her primitive aggressive and sexual fantasies onto him [Breivik]".

The report recommended he be forcibly removed from his mother and placed into foster care, as she was heavily emotionally and psychologically abusive towards him, but this was not carried out by the Child Welfare Service.

Breivik's mother had fled her abusive home at age 17 and soon after that became a teenage mother.

In her thirties, she became pregnant with Anders and married his father, Jens Breivik.

The European Court of Human Rights dismissed his complaint in 2018 - the year after he filed it.

In January 2022, due to the fact that under Norwegian law Breivik was eligible to be paroled after he had served ten years of his twenty-one year sentence, he stood trial to determine whether the District Attorney's initial decision to refuse parole would be reversed or upheld.

He lost, with the court refusing his request for parole.

The verdict [was] appealed [and a final verdict exists], and Breivik and his lawyer [launched] a lawsuit (in a non-Norwegian court) regarding the conditions of his imprisonment and alleged violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, [and the last-mentioned lawsuit, was not heard in court].

He applied for parole in 2022, which the Court rejected, and subsequently appealed the rejection.

In early 2024, Breivik sued the Government of Norway for violating his human rights by keeping him in prison isolation; the 5-day trial ended on 12 January 2024, concluding in February that his human rights were not being violated and he shall still be kept under isolation.

He is scheduled to be in court, in June 2024, regarding the possibility for parole.