Prosecutors today asked a Norwegian court to declare far-right mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik insane and commit him to a mental institution amid public opinion that his chillingly lucid testimony shows he deserves prison.
Confronted by conflicting psychiatric reports, the prosecutors said they could not be sure that the perpetrator of Norway's worst peacetime massacre was not responsible for his actions but had to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"In our opinion, it's worse to send a psychotic person to preventive detention than to send a non-psychotic person to mandatory care," prosecutor Svein Holden told the court."We are not convinced that Anders Behring Breivik is legally insane, but we are in doubt. So our petition is for a judgment that he shall be transferred to compulsory mental health care."
Breivik has given impassive explanations of how he carried out the killings last July. He first detonated a bomb outside government headquarters in Oslo, killing eight, then systematically gunned down 69 people, mostly teenagers, at a summer camp run by the ruling Labour Party on the island of Utoeya. The youngest was just 14.
"What is most incomprehensible is how unaffected he was by his acts," prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh said. "He described without remorse or feeling how these young people begged for their lives, and how he shot them in the head to make sure they were dead."
In an opinion poll published today, however, three-quarters considered Breivik sane enough for a jail term. Most Norwegians cannot understand how someone could spend years planning such an attack so meticulously, yet not be responsible for his actions.
A pre-trial psychiatric report that found Breivik to be criminally insane caused such outrage that the court ordered another one, which came to the opposite conclusion.
Already contemplating a fresh public outcry, Ms Engh told a news conference:"Our task is to interpret the governing law and in that, public opinion cannot be considered relevant. If laws are out of tune with public opinion, that's very serious, then we have to sit down with the legislator to discuss it...but that can't be done now, it can be done only after a binding sentence."
Breivik himself says he should be declared sane but acquitted on grounds that he was defending the Norwegian people by fighting the supporters of Muslim immigration.
The final decision will rest with the two professional and three lay judges who have promised to announce a ruling by August 24th. The trial ends with closing defence arguments tomorrow.
Reuters