Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik changes his name

Norwegian mass killer Anders Behrin Breivik, who murdered 77 people in 2011, has officially changed his name to Fjotolf Hansen, his lawyer said on Friday.

“I can confirm that he has changed his name, it’s official,” Oystein Storrvik told AFP.

Asked why his client had decided on the name change, Storrvik said: “I do not want to disclose the content of our discussions.”

“He told me some reasons but I don’t want to talk about what he told me,” he told Reuters.

In Norway, citizens can freely change their names in the official register but are not allowed to pick words that are likely to cause offence to others or harm the individual. It was unclear when he made the change.

The Norwegian Court on Thursday said it would not consider an appeal lodged by Breivik protesting against his isolation from other prison inmates. His lawyer said that his client would now take the case to the European Court of Human Rights after exhausting all legal options in Norway.

In July 2011 Breivik, disguised as a police officer, tracked and gunned down 69 people, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp on the island of Utoya, shortly after killing eight people in a bombing outside a government building in Oslo.