OSLO — Confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik belongs in psychiatric care instead of prison, Norwegian prosecutors said Tuesday after a mental evaluation declared him legally insane during a bomb-and-shooting rampage that killed 77 people.
The court-ordered assessment found that the self-styled anti- Muslim militant was psychotic during the July 22 attacks, which would make him mentally unfit to be convicted and imprisoned for the worst peacetime massacre in the country’s history.
The report, written by two psychiatrists who spent 36 hours talking to Breivik, will be reviewed by an expert panel before the Oslo district court rules on his mental state.
Their conclusions surprised many outside experts and contrasted with earlier comments by the head of the review panel, who told The Associated Press in July that it was unlikely that Breivik would be declared insane because the attacks were so carefully planned and executed. But prosecutors insisted the psychiatric report describes a man living in a “delusional universe” — a paranoid schizophrenic who’s lost touch with reality. The Associated Press
