The Norwegian killer’s trial opened in Oslo on Monday. Psychosis or ideology? Judges will have to decide whether or not the accused was responsible for his actions at the material time.
On July 22, 2011, in Norway, a bomb attack followed by a shooting in the heart of a rally of young Labor activists claimed the lives of 77 people. On the dock to answer for this killing he claimed, Anders Behring Breivik, a fanatic of the extreme right.
Crazy or fanatic? The question divides the Norwegians as well as the psychiatrists solicited by the justice system. A first expertise carried out in the fall of 2011 had judged Breivik criminally irresponsible because he suffers from a form of so-called paranoid schizophrenia at the time of his acts. The turmoil in the Norwegian population led the judges to ask for a second opinion. The second opinion was made public a few days before the opening of the trial and concluded the opposite. According to these experts, the killer acted out of ideology rather than madness and also poses a high risk of recidivism.
These two psychiatric experiments with contradictory conclusions can be explained by the mosaic personality of the accused. Like a good number of mass killers, Anders Breivik is at the same time psychotic, paranoid and perverse, several psychological traits which in him are coupled with a very exacerbated far-right ideology.
Daniel Zagury, psychiatrist in Bondy and expert at the Paris Court of Appeal: ” The diagnostic coverage can be drawn from the side of psychosis or ideology “
Anders Breivik, who defines himself as “a crusader at war”, driven by hatred of Islam and the Norwegian multicultural model, according to his lawyer, said he was “happy” to be recognized as sane by the second. college of experts. At the opening of his trial, after an extremist salute, he remained unperturbed when the prosecutor listed the long list of his victims, mainly teenagers. Obviously determined to take advantage of the international forum offered to him by this trial, Breivik pleaded not guilty and let out a few tears when the prosecutor screened one of his propaganda films. An attitude which corroborates with the intense premeditation of his actions and the duration of the massacre; two elements which do not argue in favor of the delusional puff of a schizophrenic individual.
Daniel Zagury : ” Lifelong Commitment Cannot Be Reduced to Mental Illness “
Found responsible, Andes Breivik faces a prison sentence of up to 21 years, the maximum sentence provided by Norwegian law for “acts of terrorism”, extendable indefinitely in five-year increments if the detainee is deemed dangerous for society . Irresponsible, it is the psychiatric internment for life. Verdict expected for July.