Anders Breivik: paranoid, delusional and then he killed 77

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/14/anders-breivik-norway-killer-trial

Version 0 of 1.

The mother of Anders Breivik told psychiatrists she feared her son was "insane" in the immediate period leading up to his killing 77 people in twin attacks in Norway last July and accused him of "lying" in large parts of his accounts to police.

The disclosures, delivered to a packed court in Oslo, came in a day of dramatic evidence that will decide on the issue of Breivik's sanity at the time of the murders. If he is declared insane he cannot be sentenced under the penal code but would instead be sent to a psychiatric hospital.

Breivik's mother, Wenche, told the two court-appointed psychiatrists that she had become increasingly concerned over her son's extreme behaviour in the period leading up to the killing.

He became a loner, she told them, and his behaviour included angry outbursts towards her alternating with over-familiarity that included "kissing her face on the sofa".

Wenche Breivik also depicted Breivik's "Rambo"-style training, obsessive playing of computer games and his habit of wearing a surgical mask about the house to avoid "contagion".

In the week before the killings that rocked the nation of five million on 22 July last year, he also told his mother he believed he had "become ugly" and was considering having a facelift.

Synne Sorheim and Torgeir Husby, the first team of psychiatrists to examine Breivik – and who ruled controversially that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia – quoted his mother as saying: "He went too far. He talked politics. He was completely mad. I felt pressured ... he either wouldn't leave the room and would sit almost on top of me on the sofa and kiss me on the cheek. I became irritated over his behaviour and wanted him to move out.

"From 2006 he changed," his mother told the psychiatrists. "He was normal most of the time, then everything changed in 2010 when he became angry when disturbed.

"He was so engrossed in writing his manifesto that being locked up with him became more and more intense and uncomfortable."

Commenting on their sessions with Breivik, Husby and Sorheim argued he was suffering from a developing psychosis whose origin may have dated to around 2002, which included "bizarre, paranoid and grandiose delusions" in which he appeared unable to relate to the real world.

Sorheim told the court the two doctors believed they had observed sufficient symptoms to describe his condition as schizophrenia – including his view that he could interpret other people's thoughts.

Among the most devastating material presented on Thursday , however, was the account from Breivik's own mother of his obsessions.

She had told the psychiatrists that when he moved to a farm to prepare the explosives used in his preliminary attack on Oslo's government district, he had became obsessed with the noises he was hearing, with "spiders and beetles", and at one point feared he was being observed by a plainclothes officer.

She had described too how he started bringing guns and other equipment into the house and how she had encountered him wearing different types of uniform, including emerging from his bedroom wearing a red jacket with regalia.

Breivik was interviewed by Husby and Sorheim on 13 occasions, during which he gave fragmented and grandiose accounts of his behaviour and repeatedly described himself as "the best" at any task that he pursued both as a school leader, in rightwing local politics and in business.

Although they decided that Breivik was not suffering auditory hallucinations, the two psychiatrists suggested his depiction of a secret Knights Templar organisation – of which he claimed to be the Norwegian leader – was a "figment" and that his alleged communications with fellow European "knights" may have been hallucinatory, relating, they argue, "to all-encompassing paranoid delusions". The two psychiatrists also speculated that his frequent use of "we" to mean himself seemed to support their view he was suffering from delusions of grandeur.

Asked in the 12th interview if he would take an MRI brain scan, Breivik refused, asking how Nelson Mandela or Osama bin Laden would have reacted to the same request. Breivik also told the two doctors that since 2009 he suspected his phone was being tapped.

"He is afraid of tapping and contagion and has spoken to his GP about that, suggesting paranoid delusions," said Sorheim, reading from the joint assessment in evidence, adding Breivik also experienced "comprehensive homicidal thoughts".

At times during the psychiatrists' evidence, Breivik smirked in court or laughed to himself, behaviour they also described during their interviews with him.

Breivik's sanity has become one of the key issues in a long trial in which he has not denied his culpability in the killings, including of young people attending a political camp on the island of Utoya.

When the conclusions of Husby and Sorheim's evaluation were leaked in the Norwegian media it caused a controversy and a second team of psychiatrists – who will give evidence later – was appointed. They ruled that Breivik was not suffering from psychosis at the time of the killings, and so was criminally liable under the country's penal code. The court will have to rule on Breivik's sanity or otherwise at the end of the trial.

In recent days the procedure of Breivik's psychiatric evaluation has come under the spotlight amid criticism both in court and in the media of both teams who examined him.

The details of the interview with his mother emerged after a day in which it was disclosed that as a child Norwegian social workers considered removing Breivik from his mother because she was unable to cope with his behaviour, described in court as challenging, clinging, hyperactive and aggressive.

According to social welfare documents quoted by Husby and Sorheim, in the 1980s Breivik and his sister were taken away from his mother – who was separated from his father – and put into respite care at his mother's request.

Referring to his "manifesto" of the Knights Templar organisation the experts said they were surprised by how "childish" it appeared hinting strongly that Breivik may have suffered a failing of his "intellectual and cognitive" abilities between 2000 and 2006.

Describing Breivik the two psychiatrists remarked both on his lack of remorse for his victims and also his tendency to "switch non-stop between various subjects" suggesting a mild associative disorder.

Questioned about his sexuality, Brevik said he abstained from sex for the decade before his attack when he first considered his course of action. He denied, however, that he had had sexual experiences with men.

The case continues.