Norway massacre gunman Anders Breivik declared sane, gets 21-year sentence

 

Story/Video NBC News

OSLO -- A Norwegian court ruled Friday that confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik (right AP photo) was sane, deciding he was criminally responsible for the massacre of 77 people last summer.

Reading the ruling, Judge Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen said that "in a unanimous decision ... the court sentences the defendant to 21 years of preventive detention."

However, such sentences can be extended under Norwegian law as long as an inmate is considered dangerous. Experts have said Breivik is likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Norway doesn't have the death penalty.

Prosecutors had demanded a verdict of insanity, a fate Breivik called "worse than death," while many of his victims had said only a sane person could have carried out such a complex attack.

Breivik description of massacre

Breivik, 33, detonated a fertilizer bomb outside a government building that included the prime ministerial offices last July, killing eight, then gunned down 69 people, mostly teenagers, at the ruling Labor Party's youth camp on Utoya island. 
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