Norway does not have the death penalty, nor life imprisonment. It is possible to be locked up for life, but the premise for that is criminal insanity and it is a complicated process, renewing for five years at a time.
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I do not think he is mentally ill in the sense of the law, based on accounts he has made himself, his friends and family and others who have interacted with him and the accounts from witnesses and police. There is an abundance of information available about him, that is NOT counting his own planted accounts designed for the gallery.
I do think he has a diagnosis or two (narcissistic PD, certainly), but none that constitute being legally insane in Norway. The term used is "strafferettslig tilregnelig" which loosely means wether a person was mentally capable of controlling his or her own actions, understanding right and wrong and understanding the implications of their acts. If one is not capable of these things because of a self-induced state (drugs) it does not apply.
ABB was not psychotic nor unconscious while he commited these acts. A psychosis is the only reasonable plea when it comes to this case, it may be argued that his ideas of the Knights Templars he believed to be a part of was a psychotic belief, but that is not correct in the medical (psychiatric) view. It is not a figment of his imagination, it is simply his political, ideological and religious view. A psychosis can not be claimed when the belief has such a firm historic basis, and we can not determie that the meeting(s) he says he attended did not in fact take place. He has stated that he expects most people to hate him for what he has done, that he expected to be shot or arrested before even making it to Utøya, that he will spend the rest of his life incarcerated and he also expected to be shot on the way to or from court. He understands perfectly what he has done and has stated that it was "awful but necessary" from his point of view.
I would be extremely surprised if the psychiatrist(s) that will be examine him come to the conclusion that he is psychotic. The unconsciousness plea can not be made as this was planned far ahead.
Two, why do you think Norway is lenient, will rehabilitate him and let him go?
Norway does not have the death penalty and a law with retrospective effect will not be made. He will not be (officially) executed, that is 100% certain.
Now, for the punishment - that is complex and I will not pretend to understand it fully. We have a maximum penalty of 21 years imprisonment. A Norwegian prison year is 9 months, so 21 years amounts to roughly 15,7 years.
Then there is the psychiatric observation and treatment option, for people who are not considered to be responsible for their own acts (insanity plea). This is complex, in some ways much more lenient but it has the potential to last much, much longer - possibly life. The problem here is that the laws regarding mandatory mental care are far too lenient as well. A few days before this happened, one of my closest neighbours, a very disturbed man, bludgeoned his foster mother to death. He has been in and out of mental hospitals since he was in his teens and his family said he should have been under mandatory care full time instead of just mandatory medication as he was. On the other hand we have a tremendous focus in our media on the psychiatric care system being far too forceful against patients, outcry about ECT and medication against patients will. People do not grasp the concept of mental illness and both politicians and health care workers are caught in the middle. darn if you do, darn if you don't.
We need life imprisonment and we need insane asylums for KEEPING the insane locked away. We have neither, and the result is that most wackjobs make it back onto the streets.
Now, to make it more complicated, there has been talk of indicting him for crimes against humanity, but this is a new law and has not yet been tried so I do not fully understand what that would mean. It has a max penalty of 30 years, but there is more to it that I am not familiar with.
The rehabilitation aspect of this, is that this is always the goal of the Norwegian system. To modify people's mindset before they are released. One could argue that one must be insane in one way or the other to commit murder, rape, assault, child molestation, etc. Most of these people can not be rehabilitated of course, but they are still let back on the streets when their sentence is up. The law is the law. If they ARE put under mandatory psychiatric treatment that is far from a guarantee, as I mentioned - the laws are too strict and the second the psychiatrist in charge decides the person is no longer exhbiting illness serious enough to warrant mandatory treatment, the patient must be released. One example is the "tram killer" from 2004, a Somali man who was psyhotic (possibly due to chewing khat), hearing voices telling him to kill, and drew a knife at several people on a tram, killing one and injuring five, was released after 19 months.
The picture that is painted of Norway as a peaceful, idyllic and peace-loving place is an illusion. We are exploding with murders, public shooting, robberies, gang rapes, assault rapes, home invasions, public and widespread drug problems, prostitutes in the streets and pirate taxis with rapist drivers. We are coming apart at the seams and the few who feel safe are forever repeating the mantra of "I will not be scared into locking my own door". The PMs claim that we will not be naive is in itself naive.
Norway is a sham. While we are far from as unsafe as the US or other European countries, remember we are a tiny country with a wide spead population and only 5 million people, yet we are fast catching up with serious crime and public lack of safety, all the while our laws are constricting the publics means AND WILL to defend themselves.
"The cake is a lie."
*rant done*
ABB will most likely be released, unless some loophole is found, which I doubt. A case of this magnitude has not been expected or planned for, as Norway in its trademark naivite has shoved its head in the sand and said "not here". We are bombing Libya to pieces, publishing caricature drawings, backing the US and EU in everything they ask, but who could possibly want to hurt little ol' innocent us?
If and when he is released, he will have full police protection, as he will then have served his time and be a citizen like any other. He will never be able to do anything like this again of course, as he will be watched every step he makes. But he WILL likely be very much at risk of being assasinated while incarcerated or upon his release.
