Posted on 08/24/2012 1:51:54 AM PDT by marthemaria
A Norwegian court found Anders Behring Breivik sane on Friday and gave him a maximum jail term for murdering 77 people in a shooting and bombing last year, offering closure to a Nordic nation devastated by its worst attack since World War Two.
Breivik, who has admitted blowing up the Oslo government headquarters with a fertilizer bomb, killing eight, before gunning down 69 at the ruling party's summer youth camp, was sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum penalty in Norway.
But officials can prevent his release indefinitely and are expected to do so if the anti-Muslim right-winger still poses a threat. Breivik had rejected prosecutors' arguments that he was mad, and had said he would appeal if he were ruled insane.
"In a unanimous decision ... the court sentences the defendant to 21 years of preventive detention," said judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen, dismissing the prosecutor's call for a verdict that would have labeled Breivik insane and have confined him indefinitely to psychiatric care.
Breivik, 33, will be kept in isolation inside Ila Prison on the outskirts of Oslo inside relatively spacious quarters that include a separate exercise room, a computer and a television.
Criminal guilt was never an issue as Breivik acknowledged and described in horrific detail his murders.
Breivik has described an insane verdict as "a fate worse than death". Were he to have been found insane and decided to appeal, the entire trial would have had to be repeated.
Breivik justified his killing spree arguing that the center-left Labour party is deliberately destroying the nation by encouraging Muslim immigration.
Although his victims were mostly teenagers, with some as young as 14, he rejected being called a child murderer, arguing that his victims were brainwashed "cultural Marxists" whose political activism would adulterate pure Norwegian blood.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Plus a bed, three squares a day, healthcare, no bills to pay....hmmm.
Better than a not insane verdict though. If he were deemed insane every 3 year there would be a hearing were psychiatrists would be able to say if he was sane enough to be released.Our criminal justice system is just so naive.
I meant sane verdict is better than and insane one.
Wow, murder 77, be treated like a king. Awesome.
Just how weird the whole world has become: to give a title to this mass killer: “...an anti-moslim right winger....”
For the press to give out titles like this does not make it so!
Even the Bible says: “Thou hast a name that liveth, but thou art dead.” (Revelation 3:1c)
He writes letters to his “followers” .He got fans of course. The socialists have always wanted this humane criminal system and now they are meeting them self's in the door. Lots of people are outraged over his cushy lifestyle.
No question he was sane, sane but evil.
Another take on this from a conservative website that even
Breivik posted on.:
The court found Anders Behring Breivik sane, and sentenced him to custody for 21 years. In a way they tried to square the circle.
There was public clamor for him to be found sane and accountable for his actions, while at the same time he showed erratic behavior in court that lent credence to the first psychiatric report, that found him insane.
Confinement for 21 years was the prison-version of compulsory psychiatric treatment: it is also the only way that he can be kept behind bars for the rest of his life, within the present law.
But in order to reach such a verdict the court has accepted a set of premises that are both judicially and politically contentious.
The court rationalizes Breivik’s ideology, whilst the first psychiatrists found them to be expressions of his extreme fantasies of violence: this explains how Breivik could walk around calmly and murder young people, and he repeated in court that he was sorry he didn’t kill more.
The other factor the court had to disregard was the fact that the investigation has found no trace of Knights Templar, the new order that Breivik alleged was European in scale.
The verdict accepts Breiviks ideology as rational, and then goes on to say that he is part of an antimuslim reaction in the West, and mentions explicitly 9/11 and the cartoon-crisis in Denmark as eliciting such a reaction. A part of this reaction has spawned conspiracy theories, and one of them is the Eurabia-theory, the belief that European elites are working on a secret plan to islamize Europe. Thus the court links Bat Ye’0r to Anders Behring Breivik. It is a dubious logic.
The verdict mentions that several witnesses have testified to the existence of such a milieu. The courts chairwoman, Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen, mentioned Lars Gule, Øyvind Strømmen, Matthias Gardell, Brynjar Lia, and other witnesses who have testified about the growth and existence of such milieus. It is also a dubious premise.
The court disregards what is an obvious fact: Gule, Strømmen and Gardell har hardline activists who regard the right in general as political adversaries. 22/7 was for them a pretext to smear all political opponents with the accusation of complicity. It is astonishing and worrying that the court has swallowed this bait without reservation.
Whilst much of Norwegian media are triumphant that the court found Breivik accountable, and calls it a victory for a common sense of justice, there is reason for concern: the verdict might not be the closure one hopes for, but a source of continuous political strife. The verdict might be a political instrument to clobber the right, but as long as one does not draw a distinction between legitimate dissent and terrorism, broad swathes of the population might feel under suspicion. That is a worrisome conclusion of Norway’s historic trial.
http://www.document.no/2012/08/a-problematic-verdict/
Any civilized society would be putting this dude on a guerney or over a cliff!
Socialism isn’t civilized.
“In a unanimous decision ... the court sentences the defendant to 21 years of preventive detention,”
Unbelievable sentence! This guy was a mass murderer and gets a slap on the wrist. Norwegian prisons are country clubs.
This mass murderer of 77 teenagers can actually get out after 10 years, if he behaves nicely in prison. Unbelievable.
And the Europeans lecture Texans about out justice system! Apparently, they don’t even have one.
Yes, it's hard to get women in prison but I'm sure the PC crowd is working on that too. He won't have a shortage of crazy female groupies coming for conjugal visits. There is a good chance he will marry a rich one and live like a king when he gets out.
Some people live under the system and others make it work for them...
The real focus should be a determination if the people who put together and support the Norwegian legal system are sane.
The more I read of the legal proceedings and consequences, the more I’m convinced most of the country that goes along with this charade is as loony as he is - just in a different way.
Which part of the description do you consider inaccurate?
Legal experts agree he’s never leaving prison. And no, he doesn’t have internet access.
Which is more insane?
Allowing the Leftist Norwegian politicians to lead five million its own people to its death, submission, slavery, torture, and second class status via Islam or what Brevik did?
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