Psychiatrists assessing self-confessed Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik have concluded that he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
They believe he was in a psychotic state both during and after the twin attacks on 22 July that led to the deaths of 77 people and injured 151.
Their report must still be reviewed by a panel of forensic psychiatrists.
Breivik will still be tried in April but it seems likely he will be placed in psychiatric care rather than prison.
Breivik admits carrying out the attacks but has pleaded not guilty to charges, arguing that that the attacks were atrocious but necessary for his campaign to defend Europe against a Muslim invasion.
The two psychiatrists who interviewed him on 13 occasions concluded that he lived in his “own delusional universe where all his thoughts and acts are guided by his delusions”, prosecutors told reporters.
Breivik, 32, is due to stand trial on 16 April for a hearing scheduled to last around 10 weeks.
“If the final conclusion is that Breivik is insane, we will request that the court in the upcoming legal proceedings pass sentence by which Breivik is subjected to compulsory mental health care,” prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh told reporters in Oslo.
She later told the BBC that the trial would be unaffected by the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia: the only difference was that the prosecution could not ask the judge for a jail sentence.
“It will go as a normal trial as if he had been sane. We will ask him questions and the defence will ask him questions and the judge will ask him questions and he will have his time to talk,” she said. (BBC)
