The answer can be yes to both questions. What the court must decide is whether Matapour was so ill that he must be considered insane when he carried out his actions. In that case, he cannot be punished for what he has done.
This week it is the experts who have presented their assessments in court. The three do not agree among themselves. Two of them believe he does not have any diagnoses that satisfy the requirements to be found not guilty. Or lacking culpability, as it is called in the penal code.
The last one, psychiatrist Synne Sørheim, believes Matapour is paranoid schizophrenic. If her assessment is accepted, it may mean that Matapour cannot be punished.
Anders Behring Breivik
The same question was raised when the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik stood trial in 2012. Even then, the experts were divided. Sørheim was one of those who thought Breivik was insane.
At the time, the judges listened to the experts who believed that Breivik had no diagnoses that made him incapable of taking responsibility for what he had done. He was found guilty and sentenced to detention.
The core of the debate at the time is just as relevant now: Are there actions that are so insane that we have to assume that the person who carries them out is not in their right mind? Or do we, on the contrary, end up sickening evil if we don’t accept that people can actually perform actions that are completely unthinkable to the rest of us?
Distorted world view
Evil exists. History has taught us that. Both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were twisted in their own ways. But they knew what they were doing. Their strong will and vicious ideology cost the lives of tens of millions of people.
As Breivik knew what he was doing when he blew up the government quarter and massacred young people on Utøya. His manifesto told of a confused and distorted world view. But he had planned the terror for a long time, and carried out the attack, purposefully and brutally.
It is this question of sanity that should be about. Did the perpetrator know what he was doing? Did he know it was wrong, based on prevailing morality and current laws and regulations?
The Supreme Court clarified
Most countries similar to ours emphasize whether there is a connection between mental illness and the act when the courts have to assess whether a perpetrator can be punished. In Norway, for a long time special diagnoses in themselves could lead to a defendant being recognized as insane. This changed after the trial against Behring Breivik.
Norwegian law now also places greater emphasis on whether the mental illness had a bearing on the act. The Supreme Court clarified the new rules last summer:
To be known as insane, the illness must have had a decisive influence on the defendant’s understanding of reality. It is essentially a case of active psychosis. This means that the defendant must have been psychotic when the act occurred. And there must be “fundamental deficiencies in reality”. Delusions are not enough in themselves.
Calm and controlled
The two experts Pål Grøndahl and Knut-Petter Sætre Langlo believe Matapour has various forms of personality disorders – both paranoid and dyssocial. These are not diagnoses that make a person insane.
In court, Grøndahl and Langlo highlighted Matapour’s behavior in court over long days – several weeks at a time. They emphasized that he has been sitting calmly and controlled, without symptoms of schizophrenia, or visible signs that things are happening inside him that indicate that he is psychotic.
Is about placing responsibility
Matapour himself substantiated this impression when he took the floor on Friday afternoon, after Sørheim’s explanation. He has refused to explain himself throughout the trial. But he appeared both collected and composed when attacking Sørheim’s report and her presentation of the conversations between them.
He believes Sørheim has left out parts of what the two had talked about, and that she has quoted him with words he himself never uses. Like the word “drastic”.
– I don’t want to go into details, but I have read through the report. There are places where she has taken things out of context, Matapour said.
Whatever the outcome of Matapour’s sanity, there is evil behind the ideology he espouses. As with all violent and extreme ideologies, which separate people between “worthy” and “unworthy”. And that justifies using violence to achieve their political goals. Because the end justifies the means.
Hard to accept
The question of sanity is also about assigning responsibility. It must be a reasonable requirement in a state of law that the person who knows what he is doing, and knows that it is wrong, is also able to take responsibility for his own actions.
It is hard to imagine that Matapour did not know what he was doing, and the consequences. Therefore, it is also difficult to accept it, if he does not have to take responsibility for what he has done.
