Anders Behring Breivik—the man who confessed to killing 77 people last year in the worst mass murder Norway has ever seen—has been found to be legally sane by court-appointed psychiatrists, according to the Associated Press.
The new finding—by psychiatrists Terje Toerrissen and Agnar Aspaas—negates a previous assessment by other mental health professionals, which had declared Breivik a paranoid schizophrenic. Issued last November, the first report stated that Breivik was psychotic when he shot 69 people in Norway's Utoya region and still psychotic afterwards.
However, Toerrissen told The Associated Press that "our conclusion is that he is not psychotic at the time of the actions of terrorism and he is not psychotic now." Without a diagnosis of criminal insanity, Breivik faces a different set of potential consequences, meaning that he could be sent to jail instead of compulsory psychiatric treatment.
A sprawling 1516-page manifesto written by Breivik made mention of video games as both training tool and cover story. The alleged killer wrote about using Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as a training simulator for honing shooting skills and World of Warcraft to explain away for abnormal behavior.
Breivik's trial starts on Monday and is scheduled to last ten weeks.
(Image courtesy of The Associated Press)
Norway killer found sane in new examination [The Associated Press]