Norway killer Anders Behring Breivik declared sane
A drawing of terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik during a hearing at the Oslo courthouse, on November 14, 2011. The Norwegian gunman killed 77 people in twin attacks on July 22, 2011, explaining that his massacre was a ‘preventive attack against state traitors.’
A new psychiatric report has found Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik sane.
The findings could see him sent to prison rather than a psychiatric ward, according to the BBC.
An earlier assessment diagnosed Breivik, who has confessed to killing 77 people in a massacre last year, with paranoid schizophrenia.
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A new team of court-appointed psychiatrists, however, has concluded that "defendant Anders Behring Breivik is considered not to have been psychotic at the time of the actions on July 22, 2011," according to a court statement this morning cited by Reuters.
Both reports will be submitted to the court when his trial begins next week, the BBC said.
Breivik himself has insisted that he is sane, claiming his actions were part of a "crusade" against immigration and radical Islam.
Last week, he accused the two psychiatrists who declared him insane of making up "evil lies" because they disagreed with his ideology, the Views and News from Norway website reported.
In a 38-page letter sent to Norwegian newspapers, Breivik claimed that being sent to a psychiatric institution would be "a fate worse than death."
"To send a political activist to an asylum is more sadistic and evil than killing him," he wrote.
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The original diagnosis also faced criticism from other psychiatrists, who told GlobalPost it was very rare for a schizophrenic to be able to plan a crime as meticulously and over as long a period as Breivik had done.
One specialist, Sven Torgersen of the University of Oslo, speculated that Breivik could even be seeking to manipulate the court by insisting on his sanity.
"If I am sane and I want to be declared insane, then it’s very important for me to want to be declared sane," Torgersen said. “If you were insane, then you would not accept being declared insane. So it’s very dangerous to say, 'I'm very satisfied to be declared insane.' Because then I'm sane. That's the paradox."
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