OSLO, Norway — Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian extremist who killed 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in 2011, lives in conditions that would seem luxurious by U.S. incarceration standards: a three-room suite with windows that includes a treadmill, a fridge, a television with DVD player and even a Sony PlayStation.
But on Wednesday, a Norwegian court found that the government had violated his human rights, concluding that his long-term solitary confinement posed a threat to his mental health. Breivik has virtually no contact with other inmates and is subjected to frequent strip searches and searches of his cell. At a trial in March, he argued that his isolation amounted to torture.
Judge Helen Andenaes Sekulic of the Oslo District Court, who oversaw the trial, which was held at the prison for security reasons, found Wednesday that prison officials had violated an article of the European Convention of Human Rights that prohibits "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." She directed the government to reduce the extent of Breivik's isolation — though she did not specify how — and ordered the government to pay Breivik's legal fees of 331,000 kroner (about $40,600).
However, she dismissed a related complaint that the prison officials had also violated the convention's guarantee of respect for private and family life, and rejected Breivik's demand for fewer restrictions on receiving visitors and sending and receiving phone calls and letters. The government has said that it restricts and censors his communications to prevent him from encouraging violent extremism.
A government lawyer, Adele Matheson Mestad, said that officials disagreed with the court's conclusions and were evaluating whether to appeal.
The decision outraged many Norwegians. "What a pathetic verdict," Silje Grytten, a political adviser to the Labor Party in the Norwegian parliament, wrote on Twitter.
On July 22, 2011, Breivik killed eight people with a bomb at a government building in central Oslo and then fatally shot 69 people at a summer camp on the island of Utoya. Dozens of others were wounded.
Breivik claimed that he had been on a "martyr operation" to stop a Muslim invasion of Europe, leaving behind a manifesto depicting himself as a modern-day crusader against jihadis and part of a larger organization.
At his trial in 2012, the court found that he was instead a lone wolf, a computer game obsessive who had prepared his rants and plotted the killings from a bedroom in his mother's house.
He was sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum, though he could serve longer if he is deemed a threat to society.
Breivik sued prison officials last year, asserting that the government was "slowly killing" him.
His lawyer, Oystein Storrvik, said that Breivik had already shown signs of emotional damage, though the psychiatric reports he submitted did not appear to definitively support the claim.
Storrvik pleaded that the court "see beyond the popular cry of the masses" and stick to strict legal rules. He compared Breivik's condition with that of the terrorist known as The Jackal, who had been allowed to see several lawyers, had married one of them and had published a book from his cell.
Breivik's behavior during the trial made headlines and renewed public outrage. He complained about his microwave dinners and cold coffee.
He gave a Nazi-style salute and said he had renounced his faith in Christ in favor of the Norse god Odin.
He demanded the right to publish a political tract every third year, in print or online, and said he had written two books already, "The Breivik Diaries" and "The Nordic State," but was not allowed to seek publication of them.
Government lawyers defended the strict confinement — noteworthy in a country known for a justice system that emphasizes rehabilitation over retribution — and said Breivik was "still a very dangerous man." They noted that Breivik has daily access to fresh air and receives health care.
Mestad, one of the government lawyers, noted that Breivik had attempted to communicate with extremists in the United States and Europe, and noted that a variety of extremists — in Poland, the Czech Republic and Britain, among other places — had claimed to be inspired by Breivik.
Mestad called his ideology a "poisonous mix of dehumanization, anti-Islamism, xenophobia and deep hatred."
Lars Erik Berntzen, a guest researcher at the Center for Research on Extremism in Oslo who has studied messages written by Breivik from prison and posted online, said in a telephone interview that Breivik's fans were initially those with an interest in mass killings, as well as women who wrote him love letters, but that he now mostly tries to communicate with like-minded ideological extremists.
Cato Hemmingby, a scholar at the Norwegian Police University College who co-wrote a book on Breivik, said in an interview that it was "especially the lack of access to the Internet and the communication control" that had angered Breivik.
Randi Rosenqvist, a court-appointed psychiatrist who interviewed Breivik in 2011, told the court during the trial that Breivik seemed rational and purposeful, and would "resume dramatic measures" if he were released.
Since 2012, Breivik has refused to talk to psychiatrists, saying they are a part of the plot against him.
Ulrik Fredrik Malt, a psychiatrist and professor emeritus at Oslo University Hospital who testified in Breivik's 2012 trial, has long claimed that Breivik has Asperger's syndrome.
The case has divided public opinion. Norway is a famously liberal society and some argue that Breivik, even if a monster, deserves to be treated humanely.
"It is important that society answers Breivik with the means at the disposal of the very democracy he attacked," Harald Stanghelle, political editor of Aftenposten, a daily newspaper in Oslo, said in an interview. "That is what Norway displayed in 2012, and that is the same now. If the trial in March has shown us anything, I believe it is that the court was right in sentencing him as sane, not insane, back in 2012. If he was psychotic, he would not have been able to withstand the pressure he has been under since."
He added: "If there is anything we can be sure of now, it is that he will most likely be locked up for life."