Norway massacre: Court finds Anders Behring Breivik 'sane'

Mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has been found 'sane' by a Norwegian court which then...

13:28 25 August 2012

Mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has been found 'sane' by a Norwegian court which then sentenced him to 21 years in jail for his crimes.

 

The murderer admitted that he had killed 77 people and wounded more than 240 others when he bombed a central Oslo location and then went on to open fire at the Labour Party youth camp on Utoeya island last year.

 

Breivik refused to plead guilty throughout and insisted that he was sane. He said that he did it to stop the "Islamisation" of Norway and that the Labour Party promoted multiculturalism which placed Norway's identity in jeopardy. 

 

The guilty party carried out the planned attack on 22 July 2011. To initially avoid suspicion, he wore a fake police uniform and went on to systematically hunt down his many victims.

 

Despite prosecutors calling for Breivik to be judged as insane given the sheer level of violence, the five judges were unanimous in ruling that Breivik was sane.

 

He was convicted of terrorism and premeditated murder, and given the maximum sentence of 21 years' imprisonment. Should he still be considered a danger to society later on, he can be detained further. 

 

Delivering the verdict, Judge Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen imposed a sentence of "preventive detention" and a minimum length of imprisonment at 10 years in a special prison program for criminals considered dangerous to society.

 

While the judges ultimately ruled sanity, court-appointed psychiatrists disagreed. A first team which examined him declared him to be a paranoid schizophrenic, but the second found he was sane.

 

Breivik will serve his sentence at Oslo's high-security Ila Prison. He has been there in isolation since his arrest. 

 

As he was handed his sentence, Breivik defiantly posed with a right-wing outstretched arm salute.