Norwegian mass killer indicted, jail term unlikely
Source: Agencies |
March 8, 2012, Thursday
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NORWEGIAN prosecutors yesterday indicted Anders Behring Breivik on terror and murder charges for slaying 77 people in a bomb and shooting rampage but said the confessed mass killer likely won't go to prison for the country's worst peacetime massacre.
Prosecutors said they consider the 33-year-old right-wing extremist psychotic and will seek a sentence of involuntary commitment to psychiatric care instead of imprisonment unless new information about his mental health emerges during the trial set to start in April. As expected, they charged him under a paragraph in Norway's anti-terror law that refers to violent acts intended to disrupt key government functions.
Breivik has confessed to the July 22 attacks but denies criminal guilt, portraying the victims as "traitors" for embracing immigration policies he claims will result in an Islamic colonization of Norway. Eight people were killed when a bomb exploded in Oslo and another 69 died in a shooting spree on Utoya island outside the capital, where the youth wing of the governing Labor Party was holding its summer camp.
Police spokesman Tore Jo Nielsen said outside Ila prison in Oslo that Breivik had been "totally calm" when he was read the charges.
The terror charges carry a maximum penalty of 21 years in prison but prosecutors are working under the assumption that Breivik is legally insane and therefore unfit for jail. However, they said that this assessment could change during the trial.
Prosecutors said they consider the 33-year-old right-wing extremist psychotic and will seek a sentence of involuntary commitment to psychiatric care instead of imprisonment unless new information about his mental health emerges during the trial set to start in April. As expected, they charged him under a paragraph in Norway's anti-terror law that refers to violent acts intended to disrupt key government functions.
Breivik has confessed to the July 22 attacks but denies criminal guilt, portraying the victims as "traitors" for embracing immigration policies he claims will result in an Islamic colonization of Norway. Eight people were killed when a bomb exploded in Oslo and another 69 died in a shooting spree on Utoya island outside the capital, where the youth wing of the governing Labor Party was holding its summer camp.
Police spokesman Tore Jo Nielsen said outside Ila prison in Oslo that Breivik had been "totally calm" when he was read the charges.
The terror charges carry a maximum penalty of 21 years in prison but prosecutors are working under the assumption that Breivik is legally insane and therefore unfit for jail. However, they said that this assessment could change during the trial.
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