Confessed killer Anders Behring Breivik been sentenced to prison for the killing spree that left 77 people in the summer of 2011.
Confessed killer Anders Behring Breivik been sentenced to prison for the killing spree that left 77 people in the summer of 2011.
Breivik had admitted responsibility for the July 22, 2011 rampage. Eight people were killed when he bombed Oslo government buildings, then he shot dead 69 others at a summer camp on a nearby island.
The Associated Press reports that he smiled as Judge Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen read her ruling. Breivik faces 21 years in jail — the maximum sentence in the country.
The families of victims welcomed the ruling, the AP reports:
“Now we won’t hear about him for quite a while. Now we can have peace and quiet,” Per Balch Soerensen, whose daughter was shot and killed by Breivik, told Denmark’s TV2. “He doesn’t mean anything to me. He is just air.”
Read the AFP’s live reports from the courtroom here.
Breivik has said his actions were politically inspired, not criminal, and were defensible as a strike against multiculturalism and an attempt to stop the “Muslim invasion” of Europe.
As the AFP explains, the key question was whether he’d be detained in a jail cell or a mental ward:
“Far-right extremist Breivik, who has admitted the killings, says he will accept a prison sentence but would appeal against treatment in a closed psychiatric ward.”
Click here to read Alan Parker’s report from June on Brevnik’s trial.