Court-appointed psychiatrists concluded Tuesday that Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik is criminally insane and could be committed to a psychiatric institution indefinitely rather than face a jail term.
Breivik has confessed to killing 77 people in a bombing in central Oslo and in a shooting spree at a Labour Party summer camp on an island in July, in the worst attacks committed in Norway since the end of World War Two.
The finding by the two forensic psychiatrists will help determine whether Breivik is sentenced to prison or psychiatric care. Prosecutor Svein Holden says the report shows Breivik was "psychotic" during the attack.
If that assessment is upheld by the court then Breivik cannot be sentenced to prison for the attacks.
Breivik, 32, denies criminal guilt, saying he's a commander of a Norwegian resistance movement opposed to multiculturalism.
Investigators have found no sign of such a movement and say Breivik most likely plotted and carried out the attacks on his own.
36 hours with Breivik
The psychiatrists spent a total of 36 hours talking to Breivik and also watched recordings of police interrogations with him, said Torgeir Husby, one of the psychiatrists who evaluated him. He added that Breivik was cooperative.
The 243-page report will be reviewed by a panel from the Norwegian Board of Forensic Medicine, which could ask for additional information, Husby said.
The head of that panel told AP in July that it was unlikely that Breivik would be declared legally insane because the attacks were so carefully planned and executed.
In Norway, an insanity defense requires that a defendant be in a state of psychosis while committing the crime with which he or she is charged. That means the defendant has lost contact with reality to the point that he's no longer in control of his own actions.
If tried and convicted of terrorism, Breivik will face up to 21 years in prison or an alternative custody arrangement that could keep him behind bars indefinitely.
