Killer Breivik wins human rights case

A Norwegian court yesterday ruled in favour of mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik in his lawsuit against the Norwegian state, finding it guilty of "inhuman treatment" for keeping him in solitary confinement.

  It said the rightwing extremist's almost five-year isolation violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Norway's most notorious inmate has been detained in a high-security prison unit since he massacred 77 people in a bomb-and-gun rampage.

He is serving a maximum 21-year sentence -- which can be extended if he is still considered dangerous -- for killing eight people in a bombing outside a government building in Oslo and then shooting dead another 69, mostly teenagers, at a Labour Youth camp on the island of Utoya on July 22, 2011.

The state was also ordered to pay Breivik's legal fees of 331,000 Norwegian kroner  ($40,735).