Mass killer Anders Behring Breivik says he will not appeal against a Norway court ruling finding him sane and sentencing him to 21 years in jail.
Anders Behring Breivik said appealing would legitimize the court, which he rejects.
He admits killing 77 people in bomb and shooting attacks last year. He says this was necessary to prevent “Islamisation” and insists he is sane.
Prosecutors – who had sought an insanity ruling – also told the Oslo court they would not appeal.
Anders Breivik said he did not recognize the court, which he contended had “sided with the multicultural majority in parliament”, but added: “I cannot appeal against the judgement because by appealing I would legitimize the court.”
He went on to say: “I wish to apologize to all militant nationalists in Norway and Europe for not managing to kill more people” – but was cut off by the judge, who said this was not the time to address people outside the court.
Mass killer Anders Behring Breivik says he will not appeal against a Norway court ruling finding him sane and sentencing him to 21 years in jail
Delivering her verdict earlier on Friday, Judge Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen said the court considered Anders Behring Breivik to be suffering from “narcissistic personality characteristics” but not psychosis.
Anders Behring Breivik was convicted of terrorism and premeditated murder, and given the maximum sentence of 21 years’ imprisonment.
However, the judge said the jail term could be prolonged at a later date if he is deemed to remain a danger to society.
She set the minimum length of imprisonment to 10 years.
Court-appointed psychiatrists had disagreed on Anders Breivik’s sanity. A first team which examined him declared him to be a paranoid schizophrenic, but the second found he was sane.
He will serve his sentence at Oslo’s high-security Ila Prison, where he has been held in isolation for most of the time since his arrest.
“His goal was to be declared sane, so on that point he is satisfied,” Anders Breivik’s defense lawyer, Geir Lippestad, said.
Before the verdict, he had said psychiatric care would be “worse than death”.
On 22 July 2011, Anders Behring Breivik bombed government buildings in Oslo, killing eight people.
Later in the day, he boarded a boat to the Utoeya island, where the Labour Party was holding a youth camp.
Wearing a fake police uniform, he fired weapons and meticulously hunted his victims. A further 69 people were killed and dozens wounded.
Many of the survivors and relatives of his victims welcomed the verdict.
“I am very relieved and happy about the outcome,” Tore Sinding Bekkedal, who survived the Utoeya shooting, told the Associated Press news agency. “I believe he is mad, but it is political madness and not psychiatric madness.”
Unni Espeland Marcussen, who lost her 16-year-old daughter Andrine at Utoeya, said: “I feel happiness because he is a man who all the time knew what he has done.”
Anders Breivik’s attacks ignited a debate about the nature of tolerance and democracy in Norway.
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Mass killer Anders Behring Breivik is sane and he is sentenced to 21 years in prison, a Norwegian court has ruled today.
Anders Behring Breivik admitted killing 77 people and wounding more than 240 others when he bombed central Oslo and then opened fire at an island youth camp last year.
Mass killer Anders Behring Breivik is sane and he is sentenced to 21 years in prison, a Norwegian court has ruled today
The killer insisted he was sane and refused to plead guilty, seeking to justify his attacks by saying they were necessary to stop the “Islamisation” of Norway.
Prosecutors had called for him to be considered insane.
The five judges were unanimous in ruling that Anders Behring Breivik was sane.
They gave him the maximum sentence of 21 years, but that can be prolonged at a later if he is deemed to remain a danger to society.
Court-appointed psychiatrists disagreed on Anders Breivik’s sanity. A first team which examined him declared him to be a paranoid schizophrenic, but the second found he was sane.
Before the verdict, Anders Breivik said psychiatric care would be “worse than death”.
Anders Behring Breivik carried out the meticulously planned attack in July 2011, wearing a fake police uniform, and methodically hunted down his victims.
He accused the Labour Party of promoting multiculturalism and endangering Norway’s identity.
Some victims at the Labour Party youth camp on Utoeya island were shot in the head at point-blank range.
Ahead of the verdict, security barriers were put up outside the district court in Oslo.
A glass partition separates Anders Behring Breivik from relatives of victims in a courtroom custom-built for the trial.
Remote-controlled cameras are filming the proceedings, sending the images to courtrooms around Norway where other relatives can watch the hearing live.
Anders Breivik’s trial, which began in March, heard graphic testimony from some of the survivors of his attacks.
Mohamad Hadi Hamed, 21, who is now in a wheelchair, told the court how his left arm and his left leg were amputated after he was shot by Anders Breivik.
Another survivor, Einar Bardal, 17, described how he was trying to escape when he heard a loud bang, followed by a loud beeping noise in his head.
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Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been found sane enough to face trial and a jail term after a second psychiatric evaluation.
The findings contradict a previous evaluation, published in November, that found him legally insane.
Anders Breivik, 33, is due to stand trial on Monday over a bomb attack and shooting spree last July that killed 77 people.
He insists he is mentally stable and was “pleased” with the new assessment, his lawyer said.
Geir Lippestad told reporters his client would defend his actions during his 10-week trial, adding, “he will also regret that he didn’t go further”.
Both reports will be considered by the court when it decides, at the end of the trial, whether he should be sent to a psychiatric ward or jail.
If Anders Breivik is deemed to have been sane at the time of the killings then he could face 21 years in prison with the potential for indefinite extensions to his term as long as he is considered a danger to the public.
Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been found sane enough to face trial and a jail term after a second psychiatric evaluation
The second evaluation was approved by a court in January following widespread criticism of last year’s assessment that concluded he was psychotic at the time of the attacks and diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic – meaning he would most likely be detained in psychiatric care.
Many of his surviving victims believed he was sane, and that the only proper punishment would be a prison sentence.
“Our conclusion is that he was not psychotic at the time of the actions of terrorism and he is not psychotic now,” psychiatrist Terje Toerrissen, who carried out the second assessment with fellow psychiatrist Agnar Aspaas, told the Associated Press.
The full report is confidential, and the two psychiatrists will give their reasons for arriving at a different conclusion to the first team of experts when they testify during the trial, AP reports.
Anders Breivik was charged with terror offences last month.
Prosecutors said at the time they were prepared to accept that he was criminally insane and would therefore seek compulsory psychiatric care, but they reserved the right to alter that view if new elements emerged about his mental health.
Anders Breivik has always admitted carrying out the attacks, saying they were an atrocious but necessary part of a “crusade” against multi-culturalism and Islam. He denies charges of terrorism.
In a recent letter to Norwegian tabloid Verdans Gang, Anders Breivik said being sent to a psychiatric ward would be a “fate worse than death”.
“To send a political activist to an asylum is more sadistic and more evil than killing him!” he wrote.
The attacks on July 22, 2011, were the worst act of violence Norway has seen since World War II, and have had a profound impact on the country.
Anders Breivik disguised himself as a police officer to plant a car bomb that exploded close to government offices in Oslo, killing eight people and wounding 209.
Still in uniform, he then drove to the island of Utoeya, where a summer youth camp of Norway’s governing Labour Party was being held.
In a shooting spree that lasted more than an hour, he killed 67 people – mostly teenagers – and wounded 33, while a further two people died falling or drowning.
According to prosecutors, nearly 900 people were affected by the two attacks – 325 in Oslo and 564 on Utoeya.
• Eight people killed and 209 injured by bomb in Oslo
• 69 people killed on Utoeya, of them 34 aged between 14 and 17
• 33 injured on Utoeya
• Nearly 900 people affected by attacks
