The 37-year-old who confessed to being the author of an archery attack in Norway that left five dead and three injured on Thursday, has been handed over to health services “After an assessment of his condition”, announced Friday, October 15, the prosecutor in charge of the case, Ann Iren Svane Mathiassen. Doubts hang over the mental health, and therefore criminal liability, of Espen Andersen Brathen. He began Thursday to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, the conclusions of which should take several months.
A Danish citizen, Mr. Brathen grew up in Norway and spent most of his adult life in Kongsberg, a town of 25,000 in southwestern Norway, where he carried out the attack. A judge is due to rule on his pre-trial detention on Friday, without the suspect’s physical presence.
Authorities have requested four weeks’ detention, the first two of which are in solitary confinement. In the event of a positive decision, he would not be imprisoned but left under the responsibility of doctors, said the prosecutor.
If the attacks bear the mark of a “Terrorist act”, according to them, the Norwegian authorities do not rule out the possibility of mental disorders either. “There is no doubt that the act itself has appearances which suggest 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”Norwegian intelligence chief (Politiets Sikkerhetstjeneste, PST) Hans Sverre Sjovol said on Thursday. “This is a person who has been going back and forth in the health system for a while”, he also insisted.
Panic scenes
According to the regional police chief, Ole Bredrup Sæverud, Mr Brathen, a convert to Islam, was being followed up, due to “Fears linked to radicalization”. Mr. Sjovol also said that the intelligence services “Knew” the suspect, without specifying the information available to the PST, nor any specific measures taken.
Kongsberg police were alerted at 6:13 p.m. on Wednesday by witnesses, having seen a man, armed with a bow and arrows, shoot passers-by near a supermarket, causing scenes of panic. The suspect was arrested thirty-four minutes later. According to the police, he also wore “Other weapons” and he killed several of the victims in their homes. They are four women and a man, aged 50 to 70.
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. On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people by detonating a bomb near the seat of government in Oslo, killing eight, before opening fire on a Labor Youth rally on the island of Utoya, causing 69 other victims.
In August 2019, Philip Manshaus shot in a mosque near Oslo, before being overpowered by worshipers, without causing serious injuries.