Lawyer for Norway attacks suspect suggests client is insane

The lawyer for the anti-immigrant extremist who killed 76 people in attacks in Norway last week says his client's perception of the world is so warped he may be insane.

"He has a view of reality that is very difficult to explain," Geir Lippestad, the attorney representing Anders Behring Breivik, said at an Oslo news conference today, the New York Times reported. "He says that the rest of the world doesn't understand his point of view, but in 60 years' time, they'll understand him."

Breivik, 32, was ordered held in jail for eight weeks at a pre-trial arraignment hearing yesterday, at which he acknowledged perpetrating the Oslo bombing and Utoya massacre, but denied criminal responsibility for the attacks.

"He believes that he is in a war and in a war you can do things like that," Lippestad said, describing his client as "very cold," and "in a bubble."

"This whole case has indicated that he is insane," the lawyer added, though he declined to say whether Breivik would pursue an insanity defense at trial.

Breivik has also taken drugs to "be strong, to be efficient, to be awake," Lippestad said, declining to identify which medications.

Also today, a spokeswoman for the Norway prosecutor's office said Breivik might be charged with crimes against humanity, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years, the New York Times reported.

The attorney said Breivik's target in the attacks was Norway's ruling Labour party, whose annual summer youth gathering on the island of Utoya became the site of one of the worst massacres in peacetime Europe. Breivik, dressed in a police uniform, shot dead 68 mostly young people on the island last Friday, including one victim who was only 14 years old. Breivik has also admitted bombing government buildings in central Oslo Friday, in which eight people were killed.

Norwegian police began to formally release the names of the dead this afternoon, the BBC reported.