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28 March 2024

Norway jails 'sane' Breivik for maximum term

A picture taken on April 16, 2012 shows Anders Behring Breivik (AFP)

Published
By Reuters, AFP

Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik was jailed for a maximum term on Friday when judges declared him sane enough to answer for the murder of 77 people last year, drawing a smirk of triumph from the self-styled warrior against Islam. 

An unrepentant Breivik, 33, gave the Oslo court a stiff-armed, clench-fisted salute before being handed the steepest possible penalty, 21 years. His release, however, can be put off indefinitely should he still pose a threat to a liberal society left traumatised by his bomb and shooting rampage last July. 

Justifying blasting a government building and gunning down dozens of teenagers at a summer camp as a service to a nation threatened by immigration, he had said only acquittal or death would be worthy outcomes. But his biggest concern was being declared insane - the sole verdict he had said he would appeal. 

Judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen dismissed a prosecution call for her to label Breivik mad, a ruling that would have seen him confined indefinitely to psychiatric care rather than prison. 

On July 22, 2011, Breivik set off a bomb in Oslo that killed eight people and then took the lives of 69 more victims, mostly teenagers, in a shooting frenzy at an island summer camp.

"The ruling is unanimous," presiding judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen told the court.

"He is sentenced to prison for 21 years, with a minimum of 10 years," she added. Under Norwegian law the sentence could be extended.

Breivik, wearing a dark suit with a white shirt and a grey tie, smiled as the verdict was read out in court.

At the beginning of proceedings, after his handcuffs were removed, he made his far-right salute as he had during the trial, defiantly touching his clenched right fist to his chest and then stretching his arm out in front of him.

Survivors of the Utoeya island massacre took to Twitter immediately to comment on the sentencing, with Emma Martinovic tweeting: "YEEEEEEESSSSSSSS!!!"

And Viljar Hansse, who took a bullet to the head in the massacre, tweeted: "Finished. Period."

Breivik has previously said he would not appeal a prison sentence, as he wanted to be found sane so his Islamophobic and anti-multicultural ideology would not be considered the rantings of a lunatic. And another Utoeya survivor, Ingrid Nymoen, tweeted: "This crap is finally over. Life can start now."

Knut Storberget, who was Norway's justice minister at the time of the attacks, hailed the verdict, telling television channel TV2: "It's a good basis for him to stay in prison for the rest of his life."

"It's the heaviest sentence he could get."

Norway's penal code does not have the death penalty or life in prison, and the maximum prison term for Breivik's charges is 21 years. However, inmates who after that are still considered a threat to society can be held indefinitely.

The 33-year-old loner had confessed to the attacks, seeing himself as a Nordic warrior against Europe's "Muslim invasion" and all those who promote multiculturalism.

The main question the court had to determine was whether he was sane and could be held responsible for his actions.

Ironically, the prison sentence is not only what Breivik wanted, but also what most of the families of the victims and the general public in Norway desired.

But Prosecutor Svein Holden had called for him to be sent to closed psychiatric care, arguing that "it would be worse to sentence someone who is psychotic to prison than to send someone who is not psychotic to psychiatric care."

EARLIER STORY:

Breivik has admitted killing 77 people in the attacks that traumatised Norway and shocked the world, claiming eight victims in an Oslo blast and taking 69 more lives, mostly teenagers', in a shooting frenzy at an island summer camp.

 The 33-year-old loner is widely expected to be locked away for the rest of his life.

The main question is whether it will be in a jail cell or a mental ward.

Breivik, who laid out his hateful world view in a rambling 1,500-page online manifesto, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and declared criminally insane after his bloody rampage on July 22, 2011.

However, a public outcry led to a second assessment which found him legally sane -- a view shared by most Norwegians in polls, and by Breivik himself who has said he would accept prison but appeal against closed psychiatric treatment.

Prosecutor Svein Holden, who wants Breivik to be found criminally insane, has said that "it would be worse to sentence someone who is psychotic to prison than to send someone who is not psychotic to psychiatric care."

The presiding judges will deliver the verdict and sentence on terrorism charges in a hearing from 0800 GMT, held in Oslo under tight security and to be attended by survivors, victims' relatives and media from around the world.

Early Friday, hordes of journalists stood outside the Oslo courthouse in the rain, waiting to go through airport-like security checks.

A poll published in tabloid Verdens Gang on the day of the verdict showed that 72 percent of 1,107 Norwegians questioned think Breivik should be found sane.

And 54 per cent said they consider his current detention conditions -- he has three cells, with one for sleeping, one for physical exercise, and one workspace with an offline laptop -- too "mild".

Norway's penal code does not have the death penalty or life in prison, and the maximum prison term for Breivik's charges is 21 years. However, inmates who are considered a threat to society can be held indefinitely.

Breivik hopes to speak again on the final day of his trial, at which Norway has gone to great lengths to stress its free and fair judicial process.
In previous testimony during the 10-week trial that ran until June, Breivik laid out in chilling detail what motivated him to meticulously plan for years and then execute Norway's worst massacre since The Second World War.

Breivik has called himself a "foot soldier" for the 'Knights Templar', allegedly a clandestine ultra-right group named after an order of Christian Crusaders of the Middle Ages. Police doubt the group's existence.

He has also railed against "cultural Marxists" whose support for immigration he blames for the emergence of a "Eurabia", the reason why he targeted the centre-left government and a summer youth camp run by the Labour Party.

The court heard how Breivik spent years planning the bloodbath, using a farm as cover for purchasing the chemical fertiliser he used for the almost one-tonne bomb he set off in a rented van outside Oslo's main government building.

In his years of seclusion, Breivik said he practised meditation, worked out and used steroids to steel his mind and body, while playing video shooting- and role-playing games for relaxation.

He joined a pistol club and obtained a hunting licence to get the 9mm Glock handgun and Ruger semi-automatic rifle which he used to mow down terrified young people, the youngest just 14, trapped on the tiny lake island of Utoeya.

Dressed in a police uniform, he methodically shot dead 67 people, many at point blank range, and two more died as they fell to their deaths or drowned while trying to escape the more than hour-long shooting spree.

The bungled police response in low-crime Norway has been much criticised.

The only police helicopter was out of action because its crew were on holidays, and a SWAT team took more than an hour to finally make it to the island, forced to use a pleasure boat after their inflatable almost sank.

Norway's national police commissioner resigned last week after a scathing report on the response, and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is due to appear before an extraordinary parliamentary session later this month.

During his trial Breivik showed little emotion and no remorse and once described his mass slaughter as "cruel but necessary" to protect Norway from multiculturalism. At one stage he told the court: "I would do it again."