Suspect 'not legally insane'
Norway massacre suspect Anders Behring Breivik is unlikely to be declared legally insane, the head of the panel that will review his psychiatric evaluation said today.
Dr Tarjei Rygnestad, who heads the Norwegian Board of Forensic Medicine, told the Associated Press that Breivik appears to have been in control of his actions.
In Norway, an insanity defence requires that a defendant was in a state of psychosis during the crime, meaning he lost contact with reality to the point that he’s no longer in control.
“It’s not very likely he was psychotic,” Rygnestad said.
The board must review and approve an evaluation conducted by two court-appointed psychiatrists before a judge decides whether Breivik can be held criminally liable.
The 32-year-old Norwegian has confessed to setting off a car bomb that killed eight people in downtown Oslo and then gunning down scores of youth from the left-leaning Labour Party at their annual retreat on an island north-west of the capital. Sixty-nine of them died.
