World News for Students of English

21-03-2016 07:00

Mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik raises his right arm in a Nazi salute as he arrives in a makeshift courtroom set up inside his prison. The thirty-seven-year-old far-right extremist is taking a case against the Norwegian state, accusing it of inhuman and degrading treatment by keeping him in isolation.

Breivik is housed in a special three-room cell with a television and a computer and is allowed into a yard for exercise, but the killer argues that he’s being deprived of a family life and that the conditions of his imprisonment violate the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights.

It’s Breivik’s first public appearance since his trial in 2012 for murdering 77 people in Oslo and Utoya Island the previous year. He’s currently serving Norway’s maximum sentence of 21 years, though that can be extended.

The Attorney General’s office says there is no case to answer and says there’s no evidence that Breivik has suffered mental or physical problems as a result of prison conditions.

Difficult words: makeshift (only for a short time), degrading (making you feel bad), isolation (alone), deprive (to not allow to have), violate (to break), terms (the rules), trial (hearing at a law court), sentence (the punishment set by a court), attorney a (lawyer).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com