Anders Behring Breivik, the man who killed 77 people in a bomb
attack and gun rampage just over a year ago, was judged to be sane
Friday by a Norwegian court, as he was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Breivik was charged with
voluntary homicide and committing acts of terror in the attacks in Oslo
and on Utoya Island on July 22, 2011.
The issue of Breivik's
sanity, on which mental health experts have given conflicting opinions,
was central to the court's ruling.
Breivik, who boasts of
being an ultranationalist who killed his victims to fight
multiculturalism in Norway, wanted to be ruled sane so that his actions
wouldn't be dismissed as those of a lunatic.
He says he acted out of
"necessity" to prevent the "Islamization" of his country.
But prosecutors had asked
that Breivik, 33, be acquitted on the grounds of insanity, in which
case he would have been held in a secure mental health unit.
The unanimous verdict was
delivered at Oslo district court by a panel of five judges.
Breivik, dressed in a
dark suit and tie, had a slight smile on his face as the decision was
given.
He was sentenced to the
maximum possible term of 21 years and was ordered to serve a minimum of
10 years in prison. The time he has already spent in prison counts
toward the term.
The sentence could be
extended, potentially indefinitely, in the future if he is considered
still to pose a threat to society. Norway does not have the death
penalty.
Bjorn Ihler, a survivor
of the Utoya Island attack, told Newsmen he was glad the trial had concluded
and that justice had been served.
"It's been an amazingly
difficult process. It's been a constant, constant reminder of why we
have to fight extremism in every way possible," he said of the trial.
"We have to make sure
nothing like this ever happens again."
The court's judgment
that Breivik is sane means that the far-right views he espouses can be
confronted in Norway without being dismissed as those of a madman, Ihler
said.
"There are people (who
are) extremists who are not insane and we have to be able to take that
on," he said.
Reading out the court's
ruling, Judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen spoke of Breivik's "manifesto," a
document published online in which he set out his ultranationalist
political views.
Breivik claimed to
belong to a far-right group called the Knights Templar but the court
found no evidence of its existence, the judge said.
He described his actions
as a pre-emptive attack in defense of ethnic Norwegian people and
culture, the court heard.
Breivik trained for his
attack by working out in the gym, running with a backpack filled with
rocks and practicing at a shooting club, the court heard.
He was under the
influence of ephedrine, a stimulant, at the time of the attacks, and the
possibility that this contributed to his behavior cannot be ruled out,
Judge Arne Lyng said.
He used meditation
techniques to cut off his emotions, Lyng said.
In the course of the
10-week trial, which wrapped up in June, the court heard chilling
evidence from some of those who survived Breivik's shooting spree on
Utoya Island, in which 69 people died -- most of them teenagers
attending a Labour Party summer youth camp.
In his own testimony,
given without emotion, Breivik recounted firing more bullets into
teenagers who were injured and couldn't escape, killing those who tried
to "play dead" and driving others into the sea to drown.
His fertilizer bomb
attack against government buildings in Oslo also killed eight people and
injured many more.
It was only luck that
more people were not killed and hurt in the blast, the court heard.
Breivik blamed the
Labour Party in particular for promoting multiculturalism in Norway.
He has been held in Ila
Prison since his detention after the killings.
Defense lawyer Geir
Lippestad has previously said it is important to Breivik that people see
him as sane so they don't dismiss his views.
During his trial,
Breivik promised that he would not appeal if the court found him
criminally responsible for his actions.
The court had to
consider conflicting opinions from medical experts in reaching its
verdict.
An initial team of
psychiatrists found Breivik to be paranoid and schizophrenic, following
36 hours of interviews.
However, a second pair
of experts found he was not psychotic at the time of the attacks, does
not suffer from a psychiatric condition and is not mentally challenged.
Their report said there
is a "high risk for repeated violent actions."
Breivik's rampage, the
worst atrocity on Norwegian soil since World War II, prompted much
soul-searching.
Norwegians reasserted
their commitment to multiculturalism and tolerance at a series of mass
public tributes held in the immediate aftermath of the massacre.
And earlier this month,
Norway's chief of police stepped down after an independent commission
detailed a catalog of police and intelligence failures.
It concluded that those
errors cost police 30 minutes in getting to Utoya, and that dozens of
lives might have been saved.
Speaking last month on
the anniversary of the killings, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg urged
Norwegians to "honor the dead by celebrating life," and said Breivik had
failed in his attempt to change Norway's values.
