WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM BREIVIK?

The world had to wait exactly a year for sentence to be passed on the "Norwegian marksman", the lone terrorist who murdered and crippled dozens of innocent people. In July last year Anders Breivik organized a huge explosion in Oslo and a couple of hours later unleashed bloody carnage on a youth camp on Utoya Island. After investigating the case the court decreed a sentence of 21 years imprisonment for murdering 77 and injuring 99 people!

Of course, one cannot doubt the legality of the Norwegian court's verdict because this is the highest degree of punishment possible for Breivik's crimes. But many people have cast doubts on the fairness or ultra-humaneness of the verdict: is just over three months for each of his victims not too lenient a punishment?!

And although Norwegian law allows for the fact that this term may be replicated for unreformed and unrepentant criminals (and it is indeed hard to believe Breivik is repentant), this does nothing to cool the ardour of those who favour harsher measures of punishment for a terrorist. Especially, as Breivik will be kept in cotton wool. The severity of the confinement regime of the "Norwegian marksman" amounts to his having no access to the Internet. And even this discomfort will be compensated for by having a three-room cell with a fitness area. Ila Prison, where the terrorist will serve his sentence has decided to create special conditions for him. Here, Norway's No 1 terrorist will have the right to one hourly meeting a week, to correspond and to send through the post books written during his confinement, have use of the library and go shopping in the prison shop. Oh, and he will be given 8 euros a day as expenses. So, keeping this "VIP-prisoner" under lock and key will cost the Norwegian taxpayer $850,000 a year. Nearly $2.2m have already been spent on his confinement in the year he has been in prison, which is 15 times the amount spent on any other prisoner.

But the main point about these conditions is that while he is in prison Breivik will be able to carry on writing his own "Mein Kampfs" like the 1,000-word manifesto he posted on the Internet immediately before he carried out his terrorist acts. And he has also been allowed to circulate them through the post.

In other words, Norwegian justice is not in fact isolating a dangerous criminal but, on the contrary, is offering him the opportunity to keep in contact with society and return to freedom, popular all over the world where he will pose before cameras, sign autographs and give interviews.

He has already found thousands of supporters all over the world from among those who hold ultra-right views and are opponents of multiculturalism. Breivik shares with them his plans for a life behind bars and promises to write three autobiographies in English in which he will explain how he has prepared to throw out a challenge to a multi-cultural society. According to the media, he has even received requests for the rights to publish his memoirs from a number of illustrious publishing houses. Breivik also wants to describe his visit to Liberia in 2002 where he tried to develop cooperation with the "Knights Templar Order", reports the Mir TV and Radio company. This, incidentally, is exactly what he refused to tell the investigation. Furthermore, he is planning to get a higher education certificate through distance learning, become a political analyst and set up a Conservative Revolutionary Movement. Under its banners Breivik plans to bring together right-wing extremists from prisons in Germany, Russia, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

He takes as his example Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned as a terrorist and came out a people's hero and president of the South African Republic. Anything is possible! If everything goes according to his plans Breivik will be released when he is 53, perhaps earlier (for good behaviour). But this is not a time to keep one's career going. Perhaps prison will help him to sort his head out.

But it's not about whether the punishment fits the crime. The Breivik case has brought clarity to a number of questions, on the answers to which the future of a dialogue between civilizations depends. It has come to light that although Breivik's methods are condemned outright in Europe, the motives for his crimes are becoming the subject of heated debates as matters of substance.

Breivik himself does not regret what happened. In his final words to the court he said that history will exonerate him and the main motive which induced him to kill innocent people was the desire to protect indigenous Norwegians and to put an end to multiculturalism in the country.

The court found Breivik to be of sound mind, and the fact that he embarked on his monstrous crime consciously and was prepared to take the consequences should be a signal that the crime of the "Norwegian marksman" is a consequence of an unhealthy process which is permeating Europe.

What does this process amount to? As I have already said in articles in "Region Plus", in recent years the popularity of political forces opposing multiculturalism in Europe and adopting anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic slogans has been growing in Europe. Attention is being drawn to this by the world's media, which names the Swiss People's Party, the Dutch Freedom Party, the Swedish democrats and the Norwegian Progress Party, of which Breivik was a member. The wearing of the hijab is banned in state structures in France, in Switzerland people are voting against the construction of tall minarets in mosques, Denmark and Holland are preparing to follow them, the German chancellor is talking about the collapse of multiculturalism, the British prime minister is talking about renouncing the policy of multiculturalism and the former German finance minister is publishing for the same motives "Germany - self-liquidation, or how we can put our country on the map". And none of this has been caused by problems of the cultural integration of migrants into European society.

Be that as it may, Breivik's monstrous crime has uncovered flaws in the approaches to a dialogue between civilizations and the question of the popularization of this dialogue among the population. Of course, the "Norwegian marksman" acted alone, but this does not mean that he is the only one of his kind. Already today the police are on the hunt for new "Breiviks" and no-one can guarantee that tomorrow others may not be inspired to similar "deeds". Especially as the perpetrators can serve their time in almost "holiday-camp conditions". That is why Europe must do all it can to ensure that Breivik's crime does not turn from a terrible lesson into an act to follow.