The Pirate Bay founder, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, has returned to Danish court after his imprisonment was extended for three weeks in December. Meanwhile, an online petition to improve his jail conditions has gained over 54,000 signatures.

The hearing is being held behind closed doors. During a previous hearing last month, entry to the proceedings was also restricted. His attorney Louisa Hoj maintains this is an unnecessary precaution.

“The prosecutor has so far argued that the case is sensitive and that the hearings should be held behind closed doors, but I don’t think that the things we are discussing are particularly delicate, and it would be good for the Danish people to see what is really going on in this case,” Hoj told The Copenhagen Post.

On December 18, Frederiksberg City Court ruled that Warg, aka ‘anakata’, was to spend an additional three weeks behind bars.

Warg is now facing six years in prison on charges of hacking the Danish social security database, driver’s license database, and the shared IT system used in the Schengen zone. He pleaded not guilty.

RT @BehrozKarimi: Some clapped when #anakata entered the courtroom were warned they'ed get removed, it got a little smile on gottfrids face. — freeanakata (@free_anakata) January 8, 2014

The “Free Anakata” group has drawn attention to Warg’s imprisonment comparing his “unbearable conditions” to those received by convicted mass murderer Anders Breivik in Norway, who killed 77 people in 2011.

“Stop treating activists worse than mass murders,” their petition demands.

The campaign points out that Warg is denied the ability to read “newspapers, magazines, books that are in the prison library, or his books that were brought from Sweden with him during extradition.” Aside from that, his total contact with other inmates cannot exceed nine hours a week, according to the group.

Addressed to both Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and the Justice Ministry, the petition criticizes Warg’s isolation and calls for him to be provided reading material.

The petition, launched on December 26, has gained significant support following the “Twitter storm” which began on Tuesday. Prior to the storm, not many more than 1,000 people had signed the petition. The petition has already got more than 54,000 signatories.

The “Free Anakata” team posted a list of links and called on Warg’s supporters to tweet them starting at 8am GMT on January, 7.

“Please join us as we speak out against his unjust treatment and let the world know that anakata is, in fact,a political prisoner,” the group said.

Convicted of Internet piracy back in 2009, Warg had already been serving a one year jail term in Sweden for hacking, where he was extradited from Cambodia in 2012. He was then handed over to neighboring Denmark in November 2013, extradited from Sweden after facing charges of hacking into a Swedish public database while he was in the country, and losing an appeal to the Swedish Supreme Court.

The popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay was founded in Sweden in 2003 by Warg and two others – Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde – to allow its users do download music, films, and video games free of charge.

The website later moved its domain to .sx, which is registered in Sint Maarten, a Dutch territory in the Caribbean, due to frequent attempts by the Swedish authorities to shut it down.