|
ALSO.- Confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik belongs in psychiatric care instead of prison, prosecutors in Norway said Tuesday after a mental evaluation declared him legally insane during a bomb-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people.
The court-ordered assessment found that the self-styled anti-Muslim militant was psychotic during the July 22 attacks, which would make him mentally unfit to be convicted and imprisoned for the country's worst peacetime massacre.
The report, written by two psychiatrists who spent a total of 36 hours talking to Breivik, will be reviewed by a forensic panel before the Oslo district court makes a ruling on his mental state.
Their conclusions surprised many outside experts and contrasted with earlier comments by the head of the review panel, who told the Associated Press in late July that it was unlikely that Breivik would be declared insane because the attacks were so carefully planned and executed.
But prosecutors insisted the psychiatric report describes a man living in a "delusional universe" — a paranoid schizophrenic who's lost touch with reality.
"After having read the documents of the case, the conclusion did not come as a surprise," Prosecutor Svein Holden told AP.
Breivik, 32, has confessed to setting off a bomb that ripped through Oslo's government district, killing eight people, then opening fire at the summer camp of the governing Labor Party's youth wing. Sixty-nine people died in the mayhem at Utoya island, outside the Norwegian capital, before Breivik surrendered to a SWAT team.
He denies criminal guilt, saying he's a commander of a resistance movement aiming to overthrow European governments and replace them with "patriotic" regimes that will deport Muslim immigrants.
Investigators have found no sign of such a movement and say Breivik most likely plotted and carried out the attacks on his own.
"The conclusion of the forensic experts is that Anders Behring Breivik was insane" and that he, during an extended period, "developed the mental disorder of paranoid schizophrenia, which has changed him and made him into the person he is today," Holden said.
The two psychiatrists — Torgeir Husby and Synne Soerheim — met Breivik 13 times. Husby told AP that their conclusions were "clear" and unanimous.
Breivik's lawyer Geir Lippestad, who early on suggested his client was insane, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that he wasn't surprised by the psychiatric assessment.
"It is obvious that the matter has taken a completely new turn," Lippestad said.
In Norway,
...
|
rss
