A mandatory treatment in a psychiatric ward could be a more severe punishment for the self-confessed perpetrator of Norway's twin terror attacks than a prison term, his lawyer Geir Lippestad said.
Andres Behring Breivik has confessed to killing 8 people with a car bomb in Oslo before shooting dead 69 others at an island youth camp on July 22. The 32-year-old terrorist claims that he wanted to "save Norway and western Europe" from a "Muslim takeover."
"Breivik pictures himself at present as a knight who challenged the whole world and the entire democratic society, and if we send him to jail he would simply think that he was taken prisoner by the world," Lippestad said in an interview with Russia's Izvestia newspaper published on Friday.
"But a mental institution does not fit the picture of the world that he has created in his mind," the lawyer said.
He added that his client could be isolated from the society in a mental institution for a long time, probably "until the end of his days," and that could be much harder for him to endure than life in prison.
Experts believe that it would be difficult for Breivik to fake insanity and for his lawyer successfully prove it.
