Mass murderer gets a chance to rant in Norwegian court
Those who believe that the wheels of justice turn too slowly in the United States — and so often they do — can take some consolation in knowing that we are not alone.
The best example on the international scene today is the exhibition being put on in Norway. Anders Behring Breivik is on trial for bombing a government building to divert authorities and then launching an attack on youth attending a camp on an island.
The court has set aside 10 weeks for the trial, which started this week, including five days during which Breivik has an opportunity to spew his supremacist poison and brag about the killings that he claims to have done in the name of saving Norway from an Islamic takeover.
Norway must do what Norway must to meet its definition of justice, but excuse us for being unimpressed with 10 weeks of hearings in a case in which the perpetrator has never denied his actions and will ultimately face a sentence of 21 years in custody for hunting down and killing 69 young people. Never mind the eight adults killed in his diversionary explosion.
Breivik described himself as a writer, currently working from prison, when asked by the judge for his employment status. What he writes is not much different from the tracts produced by in this country by neo-Nazis and retro-KKK’ers. He might just as well have answered the judge’s question with hatemonger.
A pre-emptive defense
Dressed in a business suit and treated with an abundance of undeserved courtesy by the court, Breivik said: “The attacks on July 22 were a preventive strike. I acted in self-defense on behalf of my people, my city, my country.”
The Associated Press reported that Breivik set off a bomb outside the government headquarters in Oslo, killing eight, then drove to Utoya island outside the capital and massacred 69 people in a shooting spree at the governing Labor Party’s youth summer camp on the island. An attack that horrified most of the world last summer was described by a boastful Breivik as the most “spectacular” attack by a nationalist militant since World War II.
Breivik’s savagery and culpability are not in question. The only question facing the judges during this 10-week trial is the state of Breivik’s mental health, which will decide whether he is sent to prison or to psychiatric care. Presuming that he gets the statutory maximum of 21 years, Norway will face another legal crisis in 2032. That’s because the law does allow for consideration of additional detention if it can be determined then that Breivik remains a danger to society.
It all strikes us a strained process. Of course, we suspect that at least some Norwegians consider our system of justice, under which Breivik would face the death penalty, to be barbaric.
There is one unfortunate similarity. The parents of Norway’s dead know that two decades from now their wounds will be reopened as the justice system lumbers forward. Many U.S. parents wait for decades for a valid death sentence to be carried out in the case of their murdered children. Witness the case of Warren’s Danny Lee Hill, still awaiting execution a quarter century after murdering young Raymond Fife.
Still, we have to wonder: How many parents of those dead campers would prefer the prospect of American justice to Norwegian justice?