NEWS
Prisoner loses legal bid to have new relationships
Court lets Peter Madsen correspond with a woman prison guard he met before his conviction.
Denmark's most notorious prisoner, serving life for murdering a journalist aboard his homemade submarine, on Thursday lost a legal challenge to a law barring him from cultivating new relationships.
The law introduced in 2022 restricts life prisoners to having visits, letter and telephone contact only with people already close to them before their conviction, during the first 10 years of their sentence.
In his lawsuit, Peter Madsen, 52, had argued that the law violated his right to a private life under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Nykobing Falster district court ruled that Madsen's claim has no basis.
The court, authorized Madsen to receive visits, letters and calls from a woman prison guard whom he met after the crime but before his conviction, which the Storstrom Prison had prohibited.
"It's 50-50 but he will be less isolated than before," Madsen's lawyer Tobias Stadardfeld Jensen told Agence France-Presse, adding that Madsen had not yet decided whether to appeal against the ruling.
Madsen, a submarine enthusiast and self-taught engineer, was convicted in April 2018 of the premeditated murder and sexual assault of 30-year-old Kim Wall when the award-winning Swedish journalist went to interview him on board his submarine in August 2017.