It’s been really tough to follow the trial in Oslo for the last week. The terrorist has been on the stand for the past week, ending yesterday. I applaud the work of the lawyers involved, this is tough enough to watch from a distance. To deal with this calmly and professionally is something I don’t think I would be able to do.

There is a lot of talk about whether or not the terrorist is sane in the eyes of the law. There are many good arguments for both views, but something that seems clearer to me now is that the terrorist himself desperately wants to be ruled sane. His world view and justification for his actions all rests on the premise that he is a soldier in a war, that his actions were necessary. Deeming him sane and sentenced to a prison sentence for the rest of his life would partially validate it to him. He is fighting hard against being viewed as mentally unstable in any way. If it was up to him, he’d be sentenced to death, and he’d be a martyr like he wanted all along. But we haven’t sentenced anyone to death since the post-WW2 days, and the last person executed in Norway was in 1948. We’re not changing our laws for this case.

I’ve seen a lot of articles and heard a lot of people that argue the point that ruling him to be criminally insane would  be letting him off lightly. Firstly, don’t let there be any mistake about this: Breivik is never walking the streets of Norway again as a free man. Regardless of the outcome of the trial, that’s never going to happen. The Norwegian justice system does have a maximum sentence of 21 years, this is true. But that doesn’t mean that someone who is ruled a continued danger to society is automatically let out after 21 years. There are laws in place to prevent that, after 21 years he can be held to another three years at a time for the rest of his life. 

Secondly, it’s starting to become really clear that in his eyes, being sent to a mental institution would be the ultimate failure and the worst punishment. If the system deems him to be criminally insane, it means we’re not taking his manifesto, his great plan, his important “work”, seriously. We’re dismissing him entirely. Nothing could be worse for him. As was put very nicely in the Norwegian paper Aftenposten, he sees himself as a knight,  and “It simply would not do to send a knight to the nut house”. (Link to Norwegian article)

Is he actually insane? I don’t know. I almost want to see him be ruled insane anyway, if nothing else to wipe that annoying smile off his face. And if he is ruled insane, I want him to have so much therapy that he eventually aren’t able to distance himself from what he did anymore, to fully realise what he’s done. And I want the faces of all those dead teens to haunt him until his dying day.

If you are linked to this post from anywhere and don’t know the context, please google ‘Norway 22 july 2011′. 

I am in awe of prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh. I want to send this woman flowers. She is strong and relentless in her questioning of the terrorist, and he is frequently annoyed by her. I have been deeply impressed with her self control in this really difficult job and how she refuses to let him run the show, much to his annoyance.  At times, she made him look absolutely ludicrous. It’s beautiful. She is absolutely amazing. I’ve linked to a bio of her below.

Inga Bejer Engh has friendly blue eyes and a ready smile but behind that exterior lies a dogged prosecutor who is unfazed despite Norway gunman Anders Behring Breivik’s refusal to answer questions.

I believe he is even more annoyed with having to listen to her questions as she is a woman and he clearly believes a woman’s place is in the kitchen. Yes, you can add misogynist to the list of traits of the terrorist.

It’s tough to read the notes from the trial. Today’s especially bad, as it’s his testimony about what happened at Utøya island. Thankfully, all the gory details aren’t posted where I’m reading, but apparently he’s describing the shootings in details. He seems entirely cold. He is a horrible, horrible person.

Oh yes, there was a quick talk about his gaming habits, like how he played World of Warcraft for about a year after he moved back in with his mother. ABB wants to frame this as a gift he gave himself as a sabbatical before going ahead with the martyrdom, to which I can only say yeah, sure. That’s believable. He is deeply obsessed with how he’s viewed and doesn’t want to be seen as someone who lost all his investments and then got addicted to WoW. This is obviously how it really went down, no matter what he says. It has little relevance to the trial in anything else than a piece of evidence proving how he’s re-imagined his past to fit in with this story of his that he planned the operation for ten years, which from the testimony so far seems completely false. That’s all. Even he says it isn’t relevant. He does say he used another game for “target practice” which seems ridiculous as well.

To be honest, even mentioning this seems like a waste of time because it’s so god damn irrelevant. I know there’s a lot of articles on ye olde internets regarding ABB and WoW, but it’s diverting the attention away from what’s important. This was not a gamer gone mad. This was someone who planned an attack on the Norwegian political system and its people, driven by his political views. Making this a video game discussion is not helping anyone, and it’s not what the trial is about. I’m not going to participate in those discussions.

I still don’t like typing his name. You know who I mean.

The trial in Norway started today. So far, it’s making me physically unwell.

The bbc has the worst part of it described in such simple terms. At one point of the day, surveillance footage from the bombing was shown to the court.

While victims and their families gasped as they saw the blast, followed by scenes of panic as people fled, Breivik smiled on several occasions.

He fucking smiled.

There are no words to fully describe how I feel.