"Worse than death" if sent to mental ward: Norway gunman

Anders Behring Breivik, who is set to go on trial on April 16 for killing 77 people in Norway last July, said in a letter published Wednesday that being sentenced to psychiatric care would be the worst fate imaginable. "To send a political activist to an asylum is more sadistic and more evil than killing him! It is a fate worse than death," the 33-year-old right-wing extremist wrote in a 38-page letter, of which the Verdens Gang (VG) daily published a few extracts. The letter aims to discredit, point-by-point, a report by two psychiatric experts who concluded late last year that Behring Breivik was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and was therefore criminally insane. If the Oslo court judges reach the same conclusion at the end of his 10-week trial, the confessed killer will be sentenced to a locked psychiatric ward, possibly for life, rather than prison. Behring Breivik, who has claimed to be on a crusade against multi-culturalism and the "Muslim invasion" of Europe, wants to be declared of sane mind, according to his lawyers, so as not to damage the political message presented in his 1,500-page manifesto published online shortly before the July 22 attacks. "I must honestly admit that that is the worst thing that could happen to me since it would be the ultimate humiliation," he wrote in Wednesday's letter. The psychiatric experts' conclusion last year caused outcry in Norway and the Oslo court has ordered a second evaluation by two new experts who are set to present their findings on April 10, less than a week before the trial gets underway. On July 22, Behring Breivik set off a car bomb outside government buildings in Oslo, killing eight people. He then went to Utoeya island, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of Oslo, and, dressed as a police officer, spent more than an hour methodically shooting and killing another 69 people, mainly teenagers, attending a summer camp hosted by the ruling Labour Party's youth wing.