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Breivik has a "human right" to give a statement,


just john
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At the risk of incurring the wrath of people not wishing to have distressing and awful images brought to their attention, and not withstanding the endless playing of the Titanic docujubilee, I fear that reporting of this case will become prominent, while I find myself strangely drawn to hear what he has to say . . . [8-)]

 telegraph. First-day-of-Norway-killer-Anders-Behring-Breiviks-trial.

 

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Mad or bad?

Is he putting on an extreme 'serial killer' visage, in the hope that it'll put him in a hospital with regular face-to-face phsychiatric contact, rather than a lifetime of solitary?

I have to say that I don't envy the judges who have to rule on this.

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I think the courts are behaving well. Whilst it would be very interesting to see how he cannot be found guilty there is still the law that says innocent till proven guilty. Even though this is his 'moment' he has the right to make his statement under Norwegian law. Clearly nobody likes it, including the judges, but it is his right. I do think it right that the cameras were removed or switched off to deny him his 'moment' in public. I also think that on such a high profile case the law must follow the rules to save the the surviving victims and the relatives of the dead from having to go through it all again should there be a retrial due to wrong procedures.

If any human rights have been broken it is the judge who had to resign from the case because of his comments in public media. He has the right to express a personal opinion providing he can keep those to himself when at the trial as a judge.

Once of course he is found guilty then I agree with the comment about him loosing his rights but only afterwards. I have always believed that the victims or relatives should have some say in the penalty given to the guilty as it is they who have had their human rights taken from them.

One thing I do find interesting and shows how the media can stir things up are the comments of those that somehow believe the Court of Human Rights is to do with the EU when it doesn't. Also interesting was a comment in an English newspaper about Churchill fighting the Germans to ensure we had freedom of rights. Perhaps they need to look it up then they may discover that it was Churchill (along with some other fella whose name escapes me) who is the 'grandfather' of the human rights court in Europe after WW2 (1949) and that the court is quite separate from the EU.

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[quote user="Chiefluvvie"] - why on earth bother with the trauma (for the relatives / friends of the deceased) and cost -  Chiefluvvie[/quote]

 

Because it seems that many of those friends and relatives want to try and at least half understand what makes a person (and I use the word in its loosest of meanings) do such an horrific thing.  It is surely part of the closure process - not that I can imagine what kind of closure there can be.

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[quote user="andyh4"]

[quote user="Chiefluvvie"] - why on earth bother with the trauma (for the relatives / friends of the deceased) and cost -  Chiefluvvie[/quote]

 

Because it seems that many of those friends and relatives want to try and at least half understand what makes a person (and I use the word in its loosest of meanings) do such an horrific thing.  It is surely part of the closure process - not that I can imagine what kind of closure there can be.

[/quote]

And for the average Norwegian as well. They are a funny, well no, lets say different lot from us. Somewhat conservative in their views on one hand coupled with an almost sense of innocence on the other. The majority of the population, or so I am told by my close Norwegian friend (who lives in Oslo), just can't get their head around this at all. They simply can't understand why anyone would want to do anything like this. So the court case is of great interest to them all. My friend said his family were disappointed that the 'statement' was not broadcast because they really wanted to try and understand what is going on in the mans head. Must have been a hard decision by the judges to broadcast or not to broadcast his statement, I would not have liked to be asked to choose.

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[quote user="Quillan"][quote user="andyh4"]

[quote user="Chiefluvvie"] - why on earth bother with the trauma (for the relatives / friends of the deceased) and cost -  Chiefluvvie[/quote]

 

Because it seems that many of those friends and relatives want to try and at least half understand what makes a person (and I use the word in its loosest of meanings) do such an horrific thing.  It is surely part of the closure process - not that I can imagine what kind of closure there can be.

[/quote]

And for the average Norwegian as well. They are a funny, well no, lets say different lot from us. Somewhat conservative in their views on one hand coupled with an almost sense of innocence on the other. The majority of the population, or so I am told by my close Norwegian friend (who lives in Oslo), just can't get their head around this at all. They simply can't understand why anyone would want to do anything like this. So the court case is of great interest to them all. My friend said his family were disappointed that the 'statement' was not broadcast because they really wanted to try and understand what is going on in the mans head. Must have been a hard decision by the judges to broadcast or not to broadcast his statement, I would not have liked to be asked to choose.

[/quote]

Indeed a soul searching moment for FRP supporters.

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What strikes me about his statements is their sense of righteousness, that logic and thought have been perverted to the extent that the hideous can sound quite acceaptable to some. There are parallels with Nazism and with religious fanatics too, the Inquisition being an example. Which suggests he is not mad, but perverted.
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I think I am right in saying that he has not been prevented from making his statement, it's just that it was not televised. There has been widespread reporting of his views.

As Wooly says, superficially at least there does seem to be some sort of logic behind his thinking, but he's gone wrong somewhere along the line.

Hoddy
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[quote user="Hoddy"]I think I am right in saying that he has not been prevented from making his statement, it's just that it was not televised. There has been widespread reporting of his views.

As Wooly says, superficially at least there does seem to be some sort of logic behind his thinking, but he's gone wrong somewhere along the line.

Hoddy[/quote]
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I should imagine his worst nightmare would be to be declared insane and put away as such. 

If he goes off to spend his days in a  prison who knows.... Even from prison he may still be looked up to and followed by the many  he claims support him and what he stands for . There are in history many prisoners that have continued to enjoy support for what they believe in ... I dont know of any in mental hospitals

By giving him his say if he comes over as appearing to be living in his own twisted world and is declared to be insane . Then everyone will have  seen   that he is .  No chance of saying it was a political conspiracy saying he is off his head and putting him away . 

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Good that he should have been given the opportunity to be hoist by his own petard, better still that he wasn't given the oxygen of further publicity by it being televised. Quite a shrewd move, probably, on the part of the Norwegian judiciary to allow him to talk himself into a corner. What little reporting I've heard today suggests that, whilst he was comfortable and at ease when reading his own prepared drivel, he isn't responding quite so comfortably to being questioned about some of his allegations, especially regarding the existence of a widespread network of people with similar views.

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Talking about a 'sense of righteousness' (which we were a few posts back) - what about the fuss in Germany over a clothing brand, Thor Steinar, that has been forced to close some of its shops, named 'Brevik' after a town near Oslo - not 'Breivik' as in the mass killer - because it was thought to appeal to Neo-Nazis and to be "quite unacceptable"? The company, apparently, habitually uses Norwegian place names for its brands, which have a Scandinavian theme.

See here (admittedly the story is a few weeks old now).

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