Prosecutors want insanity verdict for Breivik

Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway last July, should be locked up in a psychiatric ward instead of prison, the prosecution said yesterday, arguing his sanity had not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Our request is that he be obliged to undergo psychiatric treatment” in a closed unit, prosecutor Svein Holden said, wrapping up the prosecution’s three-hour closing arguments on the next-to-last day of the trial.

He added though that if the Oslo district court’s five judges instead opted to find Mr Breivik criminally sane, they should sentence him to Norway’s harshest penalty: 21 years in prison, but with the possibility to extend the sentence for as long as he is considered a danger to society.

In defiance of Mr Holden, the 33-year-old rightwing extremist stood up and touched a clenched right fist to his chest before stretching his arm out in a nationalist salute he had made on the first days of his trial in April but had stopped doing at the request of his lawyers.

Mr Breivik is intent on being found sane to ensure his Islamophobic ideology is not written off as a crazy rant.

The five judges are expected to announce their verdict on either July 20 or August 24.