Norway: Not insane, but fully culpable

last updated 8 January 2015

Hanne Skartveit

Verdens Gang

Finding Anders Behring Breivik sane was “a good and right decision,” said Hanne Skartveit. The court ruled last week that the far-right terrorist knew right from wrong last year when he coldly gunned down 69 young leftist party activists on the island of Utoya and blew up eight people in Oslo. The verdict, which came with a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison, is a relief for those survivors and family members who feared the courts would “mistake evil for illness.” The first two forensic psychiatrists who examined Breivik diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic—but no other doctor who saw him believed that he “is or ever was psychotic.” The slaughter of those innocents was perpetrated “by a sane man with a diseased worldview.” That makes him fully culpable. While some unfamiliar with Norwegian justice may find the sentence too lenient, we are confident that Breivik will never be released. Even after his prison term is up, he won’t be freed if he is deemed a danger to anyone. And he’s already said he won’t appeal, so this ruling “puts a final end to the criminal case”—and an end to Norway’s exposure to this hateful man. It affirms Norwegian justice’s fundamental principle that redemption is possible, but also that “it is morally right that the one who does evil should be held accountable for it.”