44-year-old Zaniar Matapour has been charged with aggravated terrorism after the shooting in central Oslo on the night of 25 June 2022. He risks imprisonment for up to 30 years if he is convicted following the indictment.
Whether or not Matapour was psychotic at the time of the crime is central to the 25 June trial.
On Tuesday, Matapour’s ex-wife explains herself for the first time in the trial in the Oslo district court – among other things about his mental health. The 44-year-old has been married twice.
– Personal, close relationship
– Very hard
Matapour and his ex-wife married in October 2017. The marriage ended in April 2020 – two years before the terrorist attack. She has requested that the 44-year-old defendant not be present during the testimony.
– When I married him, no one had told me about his diagnosis. I have had a very difficult time, says the ex-wife.
Matapour has previously been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The ex-wife only found out about the diagnosis after they separated.
– Then things fell into place, she says of when she found out about the diagnosis.
She says that the ex-husband constantly perceived that someone – especially the police – was following him. He also believed that the police had fixed cameras at their home, and he is said to have used several phones to avoid the police being able to trace who he called, according to his ex-wife.
Two of the experts, psychological specialists Knut-Petter Sætre Langlo and Pål Grøndahl, believe that Matapour is sane and can be punished.
The third expert, senior psychiatrist Synne Sørheim, has come to the opposite conclusion, that the 44-year-old accused of terrorism suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and is therefore insane.
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Centrally located
Matapour is charged with aggravated terrorism after shooting and killing Kåre Hesvik (60) and Jon Erik Isachsen (54) when he opened fire on the night of Saturday 25 June 2022 at the pubs Per på kørnket and London Pub in central Oslo.
A further nine people were injured, before Matapour was overpowered by civilians.
In all Norwegian terrorism cases in recent times, the sanity issue has been central. Two different pairs of experts came to conflicting conclusions about Breivik, who was eventually found sane and sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Philip Manshaus, who killed his Chinese-born sister Johanne Ihle-Hansen and attempted to commit mass murder in the Al-Noor mosque in Bærum in late summer 2019, was also found sane and sentenced to 21 years in custody.
In March, however, it became known that the Re-admission Commission is reopening the case against Manshaus, as a result of a report from two new experts, who concluded that he was to be considered psychotic and thus insane at the time of the crime.
