Kongsberg: The attacker in Norway is said to be in custody in a medical facility

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Investigations into the alleged perpetrator's motives continue two days after the attack

Photo: TERJE PEDERSEN / EPA

Two days after the bow attack with five dead in Norway, a court ordered four weeks of pre-trial detention in a medical facility for the alleged perpetrator.

In the first two weeks, Espen Andersen B. will be isolated for safety reasons, judge Ann Mikalsen decided on Friday.

The police now assume a mental illness as the background to the crime.

Doubts about the culpability of the accused

Prosecutor Ann Iren Svane Mathiassen had previously announced that the 37-year-old had been handed over to the health services on Thursday evening.

The investigators had initially spoken of a presumably Islamistically motivated "terrorist act", but had not ruled out the attacker's mental illness.

Since then, doubts about the mental health and thus about the guilty responsibility of the attacker have increased.

"The strongest hypothesis after the first days of the investigation is that an illness is the background," said police commissioner Thomas Omholt on Friday in front of journalists. However, other motives are still not ruled out. The investigators continued to investigate whether the perpetrator could also have been driven by "anger, vengeance, impulsiveness, jihad" or "provocation," said Omholt.

The attacker shot Kongsberg with a bow and arrow in several places in his home on Wednesday evening, including in a supermarket.

He killed four women and a man between the ages of 50 and 70 and injured three other people.

The suspect was arrested about half an hour after the crime.

According to the police, he admitted the act, but did not admit his guilt.

B's psychiatric assessment could take several months.

New Prime Minister lays flowers in front of the supermarket

The new Prime Minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Støre, visited the city of Kongsberg on his second day in office.

Støre and Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl laid flowers in the square in front of the supermarket, where part of the drama took place.

Støre said that people across the country were severely affected by the terrible event in which so many lives were brutally and senselessly lost.

"We have to stand together and be there for each other if we get into a crisis like today here in Kongsberg," said Støre, "but also to prevent something like this from happening again."

The federal government expressed its condolences to the survivors of the victims.

Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and the entire federal government were "shocked by the brutal act of violence," said a government spokeswoman in Berlin.

For many Norwegians, the Kongsberg attack also brought back gloomy memories of the attacks by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik in Oslo and Utøya a good ten years ago.

Behring killed eight people with a bomb on July 22, 2011 in the government district of the Norwegian capital.

He then crossed over to the island of Utøya and shot 69 people there, most of them participants in a summer camp for young people organized by the Labor Party.

muk / AFP / dpa