Anders Behring Breivik, who was jailed for 21 years, has been receiving thousands of fan mail through which he has been spewing his racist views
Mass killer Anders Breivik gets thousands of letters each month from a band of sick supporters. Prison chiefs in Norway have had to assign five guards to handle fanmail sent to the neo-Nazi, who was jailed for 21 years this week for the murder of 77 people.u00a0Most of the letters are from fanatics who agree with Breivik’s view that the killings can be justified in the fight to stop Muslim immigration.
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Some are feared to have come from British-based supporters linked to the English Defence League, with which Breivik has admitted to having ties.u00a0One of Breivik’s lawyers, Vibeke Hein Baera, who has been visiting him in prison every week, said, “He gets many, many letters every day from around the world.” She said he replied to as many as he could.
Prison plans
Breivik is being held in Oslo’s Ila Prison where it is costing £12million (Rs 105 crore) a year to keep him in solitary confinement.u00a0He has been given access to a laptop, his own treadmill and writing materials to help finish his autobiography. He plans to use the book to disclose details he hid from police.
The move is likely to heap more misery on his surviving victims and the relatives of those he killed. On July 22 last year, Breivik detonated a huge, homemade fertiliser bomb at an Oslo government building which killed eight people. He then shot 69 at a ruling Labour Party youth camp on Utoeya Island.
After Friday’s verdict was delivered, Brievik smirked and apologized for not killing more.
A judge ruled he was sane and should go to prison but under Norwegian laws he could be out within 10 years. Yesterday, his stepfather said he hoped Breivik spent the rest of his life in jail.u00a0Tore Tollefsen said, “It is incomprehensible that a healthy human being would do something so terrible. He should remain in prison.”
Breivik’s legal team revealed new details of his behaviour after he was sentenced. Geir Lippestad said, “He said he was pleased with the sentence. Then he simply asked to go back to prison and said, ‘Thanks for all your help’.”
Face to face
Meanwhile, a survivor of last year’s massacre said he wanted to visit Breivik in jail. Adrian Pracon who hid under the dead bodies of his friends during the rampage, has made an official request to police to talk to the killer face to face.
He said, “Life has been a living hell and meeting Breivik is the only way I can stop feeling this agony inside me. Meeting him is the only way I will be able to sleep soundly at night again.”u00a0
Life behind bars
Breivik is working on setting up a think tank he calls the Conservative Revolutionary Movement. “My goal is to develop a pan-European prison network consisting of patriotic martyrs and other politically motivated prisoners,” he wrote to a Russian follower. Breivik's lawyers have announced he was working on three books: an autobiography, including a detailed description of how he planned and executed his attack; a second book, outlining his ideological views; and a third on the future of Europe.