The Norwegian supreme court will not take up an appeal lodged by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik protesting against his prison conditions, the court said on Thursday.
Breivik was seeking to overturn a March decision by a Norwegian appeals court that ruled that his near-isolation in a three-room cell respected human rights.
The anti-Muslim far-right extremist killed 77 people in Norway's worst peacetime atrocity in July 2011. He killed eight with a bomb in Oslo and then gunned down 69, many of them teenagers, at a youth meeting of the then-ruling Labour Party.
His appeal had raised dismay, and some laughter, among Norwegians taken aback by Breivik’s complaints of cold coffee and microwaved meals he said were “worse than waterboarding”.
“The supreme court’s appeal commission has unanimously decided on June 8, 2017 to not further consider Anders Behring Breivik’s appeal in the case Breivik has brought against the state,” the court said in a statement.
“No part of Breivik’s appeal has the possibility of winning in front of the Supreme Court,” it added. “Neither does the case raise questions about the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights that have not already been clarified extensively by the European Court of Human Rights.”
Breivik has been told of the Supreme Court's decision, Mona Danielsen, one of his lawyers, told Reuters. She declined to say how he reacted.
Survivors and relatives of the victims welcomed the decision.
"I am very happy. This is very good news and shows that our justice system is working," said Lisbeth Kristine Roeyneland, whose daughter Synne (18) was shot dead in Breivik's rampage. She leads the main support group for survivors and victims' relatives.
“This ensures that we are not going to see the terrorist for many, many years,” she said.
"Good," said Eskil Pedersen, a survivor of the shooting, on Twitter, linking to the Supreme Court's decision.
Oeystein Storrvik, another Breivik lawyer, said he would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
“We will take this case to Strasbourg as soon as possible,” he told Reuters. “When we took up the case, we knew that it would be possible we would not be successful in the Norwegian justice system.”
Reuters