The confessed Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been declared sane enough to face trial and a jail term. A second psychiatric evaluation issued on Tuesday—which contradicts a previous one done in November—found the man who confessed to killing 77 people in a shooting spree and a bomb blast last summer was found to have not been psychotic during the rampage.
The confessed Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been declared sane enough to face trial and a jail term. A second psychiatric evaluation issued on Tuesday—which contradicts a previous one done in November—found the man who confessed to killing 77 people in a shooting spree and a bomb blast last summer was found to have not been psychotic during the rampage.
The previous psychiatric assessment concluded Breivik suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and diagnosed him as psychotic, which would make him unfit for prison. Both evaluations will be taken into account during Breivik’s trial, scheduled to start on Monday. Breivik could face 21 years in jail or an indefinite time in a psychiatric institution, depending on which of the assessments takes precedence, in the case of a conviction. In March, prosecutors indicted Breivik on terror and murder charges, seeking a sentence of involuntary commitment to psychiatric care.
Breivik has admitted he was behind a bomb that went off at government offices in Norway’s capital, Oslo, on July 22, 2011, killing eight people, then continuing to a youth camp on Utoya island, and killing 69 others.