Anders Breivik’s mother dies, Norway mass murderer asks to attend funeral

A decision to release Norway’s mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik to attend his mother’s funeral rests with Norway’s prison board.

Wenche Behring Breivik died on Friday at age 66 after a long illness, The Associated Press reported.

Knowing she would not recover from her illness, Wenche said goodbye to her son earlier this month during a prison visit. Now, Breivik would like to attend the funeral.

“I spoke to him this morning,” Breivik’s lawyer, Tord Jordet, told the AP. “He was grieving. It was very sad news to him.”

Breivik, 34, is serving 21 years in prison for Norway’s worst peacetime murder.

He admitted to killing 77 people—mostly teens attending a political youth camp—on July 22, 2011.

Breivik detonated a car bomb in downtown Oslo, killing eight people. He then made his way to the island of Utoya where, dressed a policeman, gunned down 69 others.

He claimed to be part of a secret society trying to rid Norway of immigrants.

During the trial, prosecutor’s introduced testimony that said Wenche feared her son was “insane” when he moved back home roughly six years before the murders, The Telegraph reported.

She told forensic psychiatrists that “he was totally beyond reason and believed all the nonsense he said.”

In response, Breivik called his mother an “Achille’s heel” who had the potential to make him “emotionally unstable.”

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