Norway’s Anders Behring Breivik, who has confessed he carried out Friday’s bombing and murder spree at a youth camp — and published a 1,500-page “manifesto” on the internet before launching the bloodbath — faces a maximum prison sentence of 21 years.
The death toll now stands at 77 for the explosion in downtown Oslo and the shootings at a summer camp on Utoya Island.
Norway has no death penalty. The most that any convicted criminal can be incarcerated is 21 years, Norweigan police confirmed. However, Monday there was speculation that a new law which has not yet taken effect could be used to keep him in prison for 30 years. Also at the end of whatever term he receives, officials said a loophole in Norweigan law could be used to declare him a danger to society — and keep him incarcerated for another full term.
Meanwhile, Norweigan police continue to refer to the suspect as a “Christian” although in his Internet posts, he has expressed his disgust at the modern church. Apparently he was baptized into an unspecified Protestant church in Norway by “his own free will,” but had grown disenchanted with the group and said Protestants should be forced to return to the Catholic church.
The Christian Post says he blogged:
“Today’s Protestant church is a joke. Priests in jeans who march for Palestine and churches that look like minimalist shopping centers. I am a supporter of an indirect collective conversion of the Protestant church back to the Catholic.”