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Norway's mass killer pleads not guilty at trial

Xinhua, April 17, 2012

• Norway's mass killer Anders Behring Breivik pleaded not guilty during court proceedings after the trial of the July 22 case began on Monday morning at the Oslo District Court.

  Norway's mass killer Anders Behring Breivik gestures in a courtroom of Oslo, Norway, on April, 2012. Norway's mass killer Anders Behring Breivik pleaded not guilty during court proceedings after the trial of the July 22 case began on Monday morning at the Oslo Distric Court. On July 22, 2011, Breivik killed 77 people in twin attacks -- a bomb explosion in downtown Oslo and a subsequent shooting spree on Utoeya island, some 40 kilometers northwest of Oslo. [Xinhua/NTBscanpix]

  After prosecutors read out the 19-page indictment, Breivik was asked by the judge to state guilty or no guilty. He admitted that the bombing in downtown Oslo and the shooting on Utoeya island was done by him. But he said that he did not think he was guilty.

  Earlier after the judge announced the commencement of the trial, Breivik rejected the legitimacy of the court on the ground that it consists of supporters of multiculturalism, which he proclaimed he had been fighting with.

  The 32-year-old defendant, who was wearing black suite, white shirt and a yellow tie, raised his right arm to make a rightist gesture after he was brought into the courtroom handcuffed. He also shook hands with some people and drank some water from the cup placed on the table in front of him.

  Watching the video recordings of his actions on July 22, 2011, when he left home in Olso in the morning and failed to return for dinner as he promised his mother, he got emotional and tears welled up in his eyes.

  In the indictment, Breivik was charged with 77 murders, 42 attempted murders and large-scale infrastructure destruction.

  The defendant will make testimony in the following five working days, according to the schedule.

  The trial, which began amid tightened security seldom seen in Oslo, was expected to run for 10 weeks before the judges make a verdict.

  Norway has abolished capital sentence. The maximum sentence a court can hand out in Norway is 21 years in prison. But law experts say that if the prisoner is considered by a court as a high risk in society, the prison term can be extended in five-year blocks.

  The court has requested two teams of psychiatrists to conduct an analysis on Breivik's mental health conditions. The conclusions in the two reports submitted by the psychiatrists are directly opposing each other, with one saying Breivik is criminally insane and the other saying completely the other way.

  It is interesting to see which conclusion the judges would adopt.

  Breivik said earlier in the Ila prison that he is not insane. He would rather be killed other than being considered as a mad man, he said.

  If the court eventually takes him as criminally insane, Breivik could be given no imprisonment terms and he would just be ordered to receive treatment at a designated mental health care center.

  The estimated cost for the trial was about 100 million Norwegian kroner (17 million U.S. dollars), roughly 2.5 million kroner per day.

  Nearly 1,500 media workers from 224 news organizations in Norway and abroad were accredited for covering the event.

  On July 22, 2011, 77 people lost their lives in the bombing attack in downtown Oslo and the shooting spree on Utoeya island some 40 km west of the Norwegian capital.

  Asked to comment on the trial, the 70-year-old Turid Sandhalt could not conceal her anger. "He should be in prison for the rest of his life, he should never come out," she said.

  But he should have some help from doctors and also learn something in jail, she added.

  Meanwhile, Valborg Bokke, a 19-year-old high school student, said that she wished all the media fanfare about this tragic incident would be put down a bit.

  "It's painful that everybody thought about it all the time and we never let it be," said the Oslo student.

  "Even he will live or die, nothing will be fair," she said. "Actually I don't care because he will never get his freedom back and nothing will never be fair in this," said Valborg Bokke.

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