Analysis: Norway divided over insanity ruling on killer

From disbelief and anger to acceptance that this may be the best way forward, Norwegians reacted strongly to the conclusions of the mental health assessment released about the man who committed the country’s worst ever peacetime attacks.

Breivik killed 77 people on 22 July when he planted a car bomb that killed eight people at an Oslo government building, then went on to shoot dead 69 more, most of them teenagers, at an island summer camp run by the ruling Labour Party’s youth wing.

If the court accepts the report’s conclusions, Breivik would be held in a mental health institution rather than in a prison. Norwegian courts can challenge psychiatric evaluations or order new tests but rarely reject them.

A poll of 1,000 people conducted for the Norwegian broadcaster NRK showed that 48 per cent of those polled disagreed with the report’s conclusions.

“This is completely unacceptable for all of us,” said Elfete Selaci, the mother of a teenage girl who was killed at the Utoeya camp.

“He knew what he was doing and he planned this for a long time,” she told NRK.

Her husband, Bajrush, added: “I feel a deep sadness in my heart. He killed so many people and to hear that he is sick…” His voice trailed off.

In an extract of the report leaked to the Norwegian tabloid VG, Breivik’s mother is quoted as saying to psychiatrists, in tears, that her son “must have been insane, given how different he had become”.

Breivik himself rejected the conclusions of the report when he was told about them late on Tuesday.

Speaking to the Dagbladet newspaper, Christian Hatlo, a lawyer with Oslo police who questioned Breivik after he was told the news, said: “He did not seem to accept the report’s conclusions. He seemed insulted by it.”

Breivik has previously said via his lawyer that he does not regard himself as insane.

Bjoern Ihler, 20, who survived the shooting on Utoeya, said he was not seeking revenge.

He said: “The most important thing for me is not to punish Breivik. What matters to me is that he no longer poses a threat to society.”

The 243-page report, of which only the conclusions were made public, described Breivik as suffering from ongoing paranoid schizophrenia and psychosis.

It said the killer believes in many different forms of “bizarre delusions”, including that he was chosen to decide who shall live and who shall die, and that he was chosen to save what he called “his people”.

In a lengthy manifesto posted on the internet shortly before his killing spree, Breivik declared that he wanted to protect Norway from what he said was the threat of Muslim immigration.

Other sections of the report leaked to Norwegian media described Breivik’s conditions as “life-long” and “difficult to treat” and in need of medical therapy.

The killer was also described as suicidal and at risk of killing himself and hurting others.

Mette Larsen, a lawyer representing survivors and relatives of Breivik’s victims, told Norwegian broadcaster TV2: “He will be locked up, either in a prison-like facility or in a psychiatric clinic, for the foreseeable future.

“I have rarely read so clear a description of a dangerous man as we have seen here.”

Among politicians, opinions were similarly divided. Some party leaders said they were shocked given that the killer said he had planned his attack methodically over nine years.

Representatives of the ruling Labour Party, whose youth members were attacked on Utoeya island, said the court should decide the process ahead.

“The important thing is not how I feel,” said prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, whose office was destroyed in the bomb and who knew personally dozens of the youths from his Labour Party who were killed in the shooting spree.

“Politicians are not making this decision. This is done by an independent court,” he told broadcaster TV2.