OSLO — Prosecutors said Thursday the mass killer who murdered 77 people in Norway last July should be locked up in a psychiatric ward instead of prison.
If judges instead conclude that Anders Behring Breivik, who confessed to the killings in a bomb and shooting attack last year, is criminally sane, prosecutor Svein Holden called for him to receive the maximum penalty of 21 years in prison.
That could be extended for as long as Breivik was considered a danger to society.
Holden, concluding the prosecution’s closing arguments on the penultimate day of the trial, said, “Our request is that he be obliged to undergo pschiatric treatment. If the court concludes… that Breivik is responsible, the prosecution deems that the conditions have been fulfilled for prison.”
Breivik, who is intent on being found sane to ensure his Islamophobic ideology is not written off as the ravings of a lunatic, was visibly annoyed by the prosecution’s call for psychiatric treatment.
Following Holden’s remarks, the 33-year-old right-wing extremist stood up and touched a clenched right fist to his chest before stretching his arm out in a nationalist salute he had made on the first days of his trial in April but had stopped doing at the request of his lawyers.
He admitted causing the deaths of 77 people — most of them young adults — during a bomb in the capital and a shooting rampage on Utoya island. But he said the killings were “necessary” to prevent the spread of multiculturalism.