A Norwegian court found Anders Behring Breivik sane and gave him a maximum jail term for murdering 77 people in a shooting and bombing last year, offering closure to a Nordic nation devastated by its worst attack since World War Two.
Breivik, who has admitted blowing up the Oslo government headquarters with a fertiliser bomb, killing eight, before gunning down 69 at the ruling party's summer youth camp, was sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum penalty in Norway.
But officials can prevent his release indefinitely and are expected to do so if the anti-Muslim right-winger still poses a threat. Breivik had rejected prosecutors' arguments that he was mad, and had said he would appeal if he were ruled insane.
"In a unanimous decision ... the court sentences the defendant to 21 years of preventive detention," said judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen, dismissing the prosecutor's call for a verdict that would have labelled Breivik insane and have confined him indefinitely to psychiatric care.
The killings shook this nation of five million which had prided itself as a safe haven from much of the world's troubles, raising questions about the prevalence of far-right views in a country where oil wealth has attracted rising immigration.
Breivik, 33, will be kept in isolation inside Ila Prison on the outskirts of Oslo inside relatively spacious quarters that include a separate exercise room, a computer and a television.
Criminal guilt was never an issue as Breivik acknowledged and described in horrific detail his murders. His 10-week trial focused on his sanity, with prosecutors arguing he should be declared insane and held in a mental hospital, not jail.
For many survivors the actual verdict was academic. But the trial that went into every detail of the day-long killing spree, Norway's worst massacre since the Second World War, offered some closure for families.
Some survivors wanted a sane verdict, which makes clear that Breivik is responsible for his actions and also makes a protracted appeal unlikely.
Breivik has described an insane verdict as "a fate worse than death". Were he to have been found insane and decided to appeal, the entire trial would have had to be repeated.
Breivik justified his killing spree arguing that the centre-left Labour party is deliberately destroying the nation by encouraging Muslim immigration.
Although his victims were mostly teenagers, with some as young as 14, he rejected being called a child murderer, arguing that his victims were brainwashed "cultural Marxists" whose political activism would adulterate pure Norwegian blood.
He stalked his victims dressed as a policeman, tricking them into thinking he was the help sent from the shore, then shot them from close range before finishing them with a shot to the head.
"I stand by what I have done and I would still do it again." he said during his court testimony.
One team of court appointed psychiatrists concluded he was psychotic while another came to the opposing conclusion. To make the ruling more difficult, several other experts who testified described a slew of mental conditions Breivik probably suffered.
Still, polls showed that around 70 percent of Norway's public thought such a complex attack could not have been carried out by a madman and Breivik had to bear responsibility.
"The most important thing for me is not weather he is sent to a mental hospital or jail, it's just that he remains off the streets (and) he is never let out," Vegard Groslie Wennesland, a survivor of the attack said before the verdict.
Breivik has said he would accept a sane verdict, but derided a jail term as "pathetic", and said acquittal or execution were the only reasonable outcomes.
A commission investigating the attack earlier this month concluded that all of part of it could have been prevented and intelligence, police and government blunders likely cost lives.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF A BOASTFUL KILLER
As a marathon trial neared its end, the world of Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik shrank from a globally televised, clench-fisted victory salute to tales of plastic surgery on his nose, failed business deals and obsessive computer gaming.
Relentless questioning by prosecutors stripped down the anti-Islam militant from an almost larger-than-life monster who slaughtered 77 people to a rather mediocre, 33-year-old man who excelled in little other than being evil.
The 10-week trial that ended with a verdict on Friday that Breivik was not insane and must serve a maximum jail term was once mocked as over-the-top Nordic liberalism and a courtroom circus for his extreme far-right views. But the patient civility of Norwegian justice appears to have triumphed.
"I don't think people realised how small and pathetic he was, with that thin voice of his," said Mette Yvonne Larsen, one of the three lawyers in court representing victims.
It did not seem that way on the first day of his trial, when a smirking Breivik first walked into the packed courtroom with his far-right salute on live television. Breivik had even received over 100 letters of support from around Europe.
In a fresh suit, stylish tie and ironed shirt, he shook hands with prosecutors and lawyers. Norwegians appeared to treat him like they would a suspect in a household burglary.
Breivik then read page after page of his testimony, justifying his bombing of government offices and a gun rampage against the ruling Labour party's youth movement on the grounds that Europe was threatened by a multicultural "hell".
The judge politely tried to shut him up. "Just one more page," Breivik replied. The judge seemed powerless to stop him.
THE EDIFICE STARTS TO CRUMBLE
But there were signs even then that he would soon fall from his perch and his edifice would crumble.
"His hand was like a child's, limp," said Larsen, one of those who had shaken hands with him. "Not like a man's."
From that first day of trial, his decline and fall began.
The mild mannered prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh talked down to him like she would a child, gently probing how he returned to live with his mother after business deals failed, and his habit of wearing a face mask to avoid getting dirty.
She quietly insinuated, with an almost mischievous smile, that he had a nose job. Asked about his tendency to spend days playing computer games, he lost his composure.
"I know where you're going, you're ridiculing me," he said. "I will not be a part of that. I will turn my microphone off."
He often dug his own grave. He called himself a "caring person, talked about killing people who had "leftist looks" on their faces, and said women were inferior and belonged at home.
ICY CIVILITY
There was also the sheer horror, tales of how his victims were paralysed with fear who just stopped running and lay down before he shot them dead in the head, how he roared a joyous battle cry, looking angry and smiling simultaneously.
And how in police custody after the massacre, he appeared more concerned about blood loss from his cut finger and posed like a bodybuilder for a police photographer.
The icy civility of Norwegians appeared then to be breaking. A victim's relative threw a shoe at him. Tens of thousands of Norwegians spontaneously protested, singing a children's song that Breivik had said was Marxist propaganda.
After a few days, Breivik's time in the sun was over and it was the turn of the survivors of the mass shooting on Utoeya island to recount their tales. One by one they confronted him.
"Victims remembered the gunman being a monster, being two metres high," Geir Lippestad, Breivik's lawyer, told Reuters.
"The trial brought him down to just a human being with very bad thoughts. If you looked upon him as a monster, that would have taken away responsibility as society. The society has some responsibility about how this was possible."
Breivik seemed particularly uneasy one day when a young girl sat in the court to testify. She had put on a top without sleeves to show him, and the world, the now dangling limb that was once a healthy arm.
Breivik looked shocked, fidgety, his face flushed.
"On July 22, he was in control," said Eskil Pedersen, the leader of the Labour Party's youth wing and a massacre survivor, referring to the date of the attack last year.
"A lot of survivors have said that during the trial he has been brought down to mediocrity."
On the last day of the trial hearings, two months ago, he gave a final speech. Few remember the diatribe. Most international TV coverage had long gone. Some people yawned. Others just walked out of the court.
Breivik's days of fame were over.
"The first day everyone listened," said Larsen. "On the last day no one did. He looked kind of helpless when people walked out of the courtroom."
- Reuters
Breivik, who has admitted blowing up the Oslo government headquarters with a fertiliser bomb, killing eight, before gunning down 69 at the ruling party's summer youth camp, was sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum penalty in Norway.
But officials can prevent his release indefinitely and are expected to do so if the anti-Muslim right-winger still poses a threat. Breivik had rejected prosecutors' arguments that he was mad, and had said he would appeal if he were ruled insane.
"In a unanimous decision ... the court sentences the defendant to 21 years of preventive detention," said judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen, dismissing the prosecutor's call for a verdict that would have labelled Breivik insane and have confined him indefinitely to psychiatric care.
The killings shook this nation of five million which had prided itself as a safe haven from much of the world's troubles, raising questions about the prevalence of far-right views in a country where oil wealth has attracted rising immigration.
Breivik, 33, will be kept in isolation inside Ila Prison on the outskirts of Oslo inside relatively spacious quarters that include a separate exercise room, a computer and a television.
Criminal guilt was never an issue as Breivik acknowledged and described in horrific detail his murders. His 10-week trial focused on his sanity, with prosecutors arguing he should be declared insane and held in a mental hospital, not jail.
For many survivors the actual verdict was academic. But the trial that went into every detail of the day-long killing spree, Norway's worst massacre since the Second World War, offered some closure for families.
Some survivors wanted a sane verdict, which makes clear that Breivik is responsible for his actions and also makes a protracted appeal unlikely.
Breivik has described an insane verdict as "a fate worse than death". Were he to have been found insane and decided to appeal, the entire trial would have had to be repeated.
Breivik justified his killing spree arguing that the centre-left Labour party is deliberately destroying the nation by encouraging Muslim immigration.
Although his victims were mostly teenagers, with some as young as 14, he rejected being called a child murderer, arguing that his victims were brainwashed "cultural Marxists" whose political activism would adulterate pure Norwegian blood.
He stalked his victims dressed as a policeman, tricking them into thinking he was the help sent from the shore, then shot them from close range before finishing them with a shot to the head.
"I stand by what I have done and I would still do it again." he said during his court testimony.
One team of court appointed psychiatrists concluded he was psychotic while another came to the opposing conclusion. To make the ruling more difficult, several other experts who testified described a slew of mental conditions Breivik probably suffered.
Still, polls showed that around 70 percent of Norway's public thought such a complex attack could not have been carried out by a madman and Breivik had to bear responsibility.
"The most important thing for me is not weather he is sent to a mental hospital or jail, it's just that he remains off the streets (and) he is never let out," Vegard Groslie Wennesland, a survivor of the attack said before the verdict.
Breivik has said he would accept a sane verdict, but derided a jail term as "pathetic", and said acquittal or execution were the only reasonable outcomes.
A commission investigating the attack earlier this month concluded that all of part of it could have been prevented and intelligence, police and government blunders likely cost lives.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF A BOASTFUL KILLER
As a marathon trial neared its end, the world of Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik shrank from a globally televised, clench-fisted victory salute to tales of plastic surgery on his nose, failed business deals and obsessive computer gaming.
Relentless questioning by prosecutors stripped down the anti-Islam militant from an almost larger-than-life monster who slaughtered 77 people to a rather mediocre, 33-year-old man who excelled in little other than being evil.
The 10-week trial that ended with a verdict on Friday that Breivik was not insane and must serve a maximum jail term was once mocked as over-the-top Nordic liberalism and a courtroom circus for his extreme far-right views. But the patient civility of Norwegian justice appears to have triumphed.
"I don't think people realised how small and pathetic he was, with that thin voice of his," said Mette Yvonne Larsen, one of the three lawyers in court representing victims.
It did not seem that way on the first day of his trial, when a smirking Breivik first walked into the packed courtroom with his far-right salute on live television. Breivik had even received over 100 letters of support from around Europe.
In a fresh suit, stylish tie and ironed shirt, he shook hands with prosecutors and lawyers. Norwegians appeared to treat him like they would a suspect in a household burglary.
Breivik then read page after page of his testimony, justifying his bombing of government offices and a gun rampage against the ruling Labour party's youth movement on the grounds that Europe was threatened by a multicultural "hell".
The judge politely tried to shut him up. "Just one more page," Breivik replied. The judge seemed powerless to stop him.
THE EDIFICE STARTS TO CRUMBLE
But there were signs even then that he would soon fall from his perch and his edifice would crumble.
"His hand was like a child's, limp," said Larsen, one of those who had shaken hands with him. "Not like a man's."
From that first day of trial, his decline and fall began.
The mild mannered prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh talked down to him like she would a child, gently probing how he returned to live with his mother after business deals failed, and his habit of wearing a face mask to avoid getting dirty.
She quietly insinuated, with an almost mischievous smile, that he had a nose job. Asked about his tendency to spend days playing computer games, he lost his composure.
"I know where you're going, you're ridiculing me," he said. "I will not be a part of that. I will turn my microphone off."
He often dug his own grave. He called himself a "caring person, talked about killing people who had "leftist looks" on their faces, and said women were inferior and belonged at home.
ICY CIVILITY
There was also the sheer horror, tales of how his victims were paralysed with fear who just stopped running and lay down before he shot them dead in the head, how he roared a joyous battle cry, looking angry and smiling simultaneously.
And how in police custody after the massacre, he appeared more concerned about blood loss from his cut finger and posed like a bodybuilder for a police photographer.
The icy civility of Norwegians appeared then to be breaking. A victim's relative threw a shoe at him. Tens of thousands of Norwegians spontaneously protested, singing a children's song that Breivik had said was Marxist propaganda.
After a few days, Breivik's time in the sun was over and it was the turn of the survivors of the mass shooting on Utoeya island to recount their tales. One by one they confronted him.
"Victims remembered the gunman being a monster, being two metres high," Geir Lippestad, Breivik's lawyer, told Reuters.
"The trial brought him down to just a human being with very bad thoughts. If you looked upon him as a monster, that would have taken away responsibility as society. The society has some responsibility about how this was possible."
Breivik seemed particularly uneasy one day when a young girl sat in the court to testify. She had put on a top without sleeves to show him, and the world, the now dangling limb that was once a healthy arm.
Breivik looked shocked, fidgety, his face flushed.
"On July 22, he was in control," said Eskil Pedersen, the leader of the Labour Party's youth wing and a massacre survivor, referring to the date of the attack last year.
"A lot of survivors have said that during the trial he has been brought down to mediocrity."
On the last day of the trial hearings, two months ago, he gave a final speech. Few remember the diatribe. Most international TV coverage had long gone. Some people yawned. Others just walked out of the court.
Breivik's days of fame were over.
"The first day everyone listened," said Larsen. "On the last day no one did. He looked kind of helpless when people walked out of the courtroom."
- Reuters