Oslo, Mar 7: Anders Behring Breivik was indicted today on terror and murder charges for slaying 77 people in a bomb and shooting rampage, but prosecutors said the confessed killer likely won't go to prison for Norway's worst peacetime massacre.
Prosecutors said they consider the 33-year-old right-wing extremist psychotic and will seek a sentence of involuntary commitment to psychiatric care instead of imprisonment, unless new information about his mental health emerges during the trial set to start in April.
In either case, Breivik could spend the rest of his life in captivity, prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh told The Associated Press.
“Regardless of the sentence, we have promised that we will do whatever we can to keep him away from society as long as the system allows us,” she said.
The terror charges carry a maximum penalty of 21 years in prison, but sentences can be prolonged indefinitely for inmates deemed to pose a danger to Norwegian society. Similar rules apply in psychiatric care.
As expected, prosecutors charged Breivik under a paragraph in Norway's anti-terror law that refers to violent acts intended to disrupt key government functions or spread fears in the population.
Breivik has confessed to the July 22 attacks, but denies criminal guilt, portraying the victims as “traitors” for embracing immigration policies he claims will result in an Islamic colonization of Norway.
The indictment listed the names of the eight people killed when a bomb exploded in downtown Oslo and the 69 victims of a shooting spree on Utoya island outside the capital, where the youth wing of the governing Labor Party was holding its annual summer camp.
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