A Norwegian court on Friday ordered the remand in medical care of the author of a deadly archery attack in Norway, amid growing questions about his mental health.
Espen Andersen Bråthen will be detained for four weeks as a preventive measure, the first two in total isolation, Judge Ann Mikalsen has ruled.
Doubts hover over the psychiatric condition, and therefore criminal liability, of the 37-year-old Dane suspected of radicalization Islamist and who admitted having killed five people and injured three other Wednesdays in Kongsberg in the south-east of the country, where he lives.
His pre-trial detention will be in a medical institution, said prosecutor Ann Iren Svane Mathiassen in advance.
“He was taken care of by the health services Thursday evening following an assessment of his state of health,” she told AFP on Friday.
Bråthen had started undergoing a psychiatric assessment on Thursday to determine whether he could be held criminally responsible for his actions. The conclusions are expected to take several months.
“This indicates that all is not in place” in the head of the suspect, declared his lawyer, Fredrik Neumann, to the newspaper VG. “A full forensic assessment will clear things up.”
The Dane having consented in advance to his detention, the judge’s decision on Friday was taken at the end of a simplified procedure, without the appearance of the suspect.
If the attacks bear, they say, the mark of a “terrorist act”, the authorities do not exclude the hypothesis of madness.
“There is no doubt that the act itself apparently suggests that it may be a terrorist act, but it is now important that the investigation progress and that the motivations of the suspect be clarified. PST Chief Security Officer Hans Sverre Sjøvold said Thursday.
“This is a person who has been going back and forth in the health care system for a while,” he said, without further details.
“We are vulnerable. We can be helped by the police or the intelligence services but deep down, resilience is in the communities, ”newly installed Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told AFP, who came to assure the people of Kongsberg of the support of all of Norway.
With the Minister of Justice, he deposited flowers and candles near the crime sites.
Reported in the past for radicalization, Bråthen, a convert to Islam a few years ago, admitted during questioning that he had committed the attack, in particular armed with a bow and arrows.
“He told us why he did this but we cannot tell the public anything about his motives at this stage,” the prosecutor told AFP on Thursday.
Neighbor “devastated”
The suspect “is known” to the PST, which is particularly responsible for counterterrorism in Norway, but few details have been provided.
“There have been fears related to radicalization previously,” said police official Ole Bredrup Saeverud. Those fears dated back to 2020 and before, and had resulted in police follow-up, he said.
According to Norwegian media, Bråthen has been the target of two court rulings in the past: a ban last year from visiting his parents after threatening to kill his father and a conviction for burglary and buying hash in 2012.
A video of him from 2017 was also unearthed, where he pronounces a profession of faith in a threatening tone.
Bråthen, who most likely acted alone according to the police, killed four women and a man, aged between 50 and 70, in several places in Kongsberg, a small town without history of about 25,000 inhabitants, some 80 kilometers to west of Oslo.
The new Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre is expected during the day in this still shocked city. Flowers and candles were placed at the multiple crime sites.
Svein Westad, a 75-year-old retiree, wanders through Hyttegata, a street where two of his neighbors and friends were killed in their homes.
“I am totally devastated. I will never get over it, ”he told AFP. “They should have caught him immediately,” he adds, referring to the police, criticized for having taken more than half an hour after the first alerts to arrest Bråthen.
On condition of anonymity, a neighbor described Bråthen as an unfriendly person. “Never a smile, no expression on his face” and “always alone,” he told AFP.
Several planned Islamist attacks have been foiled in Norway in the past.
But the country has been bereaved by two far-right attacks in the past decade, notably committed by Anders Behring Breivik (77 killed) on July 22, 2011.