Category Archives: News

Death sparks anger at Ireland’s abortion laws

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By KAREN KISSANE EUROPE CORRESPONDENT DUBLIN

THE Irish government faces worldwide pressure to reform abortion law, with demonstrations planned for Irish embassies around the globe over the death of a young woman in a Galway hospital.
About 2000 demonstrators gathered outside the Irish parliament, the Dail, on Wednesday night to protest against the government’s inaction over abortion after news of the death of Savita Halappanavar, 31.
Mrs Halappanavar died after doctors refused to terminate her 17-week pregnancy, even though they knew her miscarriage was inevitable and there was no chance the foetus would survive.
They left Mrs Halappanavar to labour naturally, despite her pleas to be induced, as long as the foetal heartbeat continued.
Her husband said doctors told him this was because “this is a Catholic country”.
Mrs Halappanavar delivered a dead foetus after three days of agonising pain but later died of septicaemia.
Many distressed protesters outside the Dail held candles in her memory, and there were emotional scenes as speakers condemned the government for having rejected abortion-law reforms tabled by United Left Alliance MP Clare Daly.
“Had that legislation been in place, Savita’s life would have been saved because doctors at University Hospital in Galway would have had a very clear understanding of legal guidelines,” Choice spokeswoman Stephanie Lord later told Fairfax Media.
“People are very angry and upset that this woman had to die before anyone would take notice. There have been women who have been raped and suicidal or who have had horrendous medical conditions and now this young woman has died – why has it got to this stage?
“Savita had a heartbeat, too.”
Abortion is a bitterly divisive issue in Catholic-dominated Ireland, where an effective ban on the procedure results in thousands of women each year flying out of the country to get abortions overseas. More than 4000 go to the UK alone, according to British health statistics.
In 1983 Ireland’s constitution was amended to ban abortion completely.
In 1992, the country’s Supreme Court ruled that it was permitted when the mother’s life was at risk, including at risk of suicide. This related to a case in which the government used the courts to try to prevent a 14-year-old rape victim from leaving the country to have an abortion overseas.
The 1983 ban is effectively still in place because seven successive governments have refused to back the Supreme Court decision by enacting legislation.
In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights demanded that Ireland pass legislation to give effect to the court decision. The government then set up an expert panel to report to the Irish health minister.
Prime Minister Enda Kenny said the government was due to respond by the end of the month to the demand for reform by the Court of Human Rights.
“This is a tragic case where we have a woman who lost her life, her child is lost and her husband is bereaved,” he said.
Several weeks ago he had said that abortion-law reform was not a priority for his government.
Another abortion-rights demonstration ending in a march on the Dail is planned for the weekend.

First published in The Age.

Woman dies in Irish hospital after being denied abortion

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Karen Kissane in Dublin

A YOUNG woman died of septicaemia in Ireland after Catholic doctors refused to terminate her miscarriage because abortion was against the country’s law and religious beliefs.A YOUNG woman died of septicaemia in Ireland after Catholic doctors refused to terminate her miscarriage because abortion was against the country’s law and religious beliefs.

Savita Halappanavar, 31, died last month in University Hospital Galway after three days of agony, the Irish Times reported on Wednesday.

Doctors told her she was losing her 17-week pregnancy, as her cervix had dilated and the amniotic sac had broken, and that the foetus would not survive.

Her husband told the newspaper she begged for birth to be induced but was told this was not possible because the foetal heartbeat was still present “and this is a Catholic country”.

Praveen Halappanavar said that his wife, a Hindu, said, “I am neither Irish nor Catholic,” but they said there was nothing they could do.”

Mr Halappanavar said his wife was left in extreme pain for another two-and-a-half days until the foetal heartbeat stopped. The dead foetus was then removed but Mrs Halappanavar was soon taken to intensive care where she died on October 28.

An autopsy determined she had developed septicaemia, or blood poisoning, the Irish Times reported.

The hospital and local health service confirmed they were investigating her death but said privacy issues prevented them from commenting on individual cases.

Abortion is a bitterly divisive issue in Catholic-dominated Ireland, where an effective ban on the procedure leaves thousands of women each year flying out of the country to get abortions overseas. More than 4000 go to the UK alone, according to British health statistics.

Stephanie Lord, a spokeswoman for Choice Ireland, said Mrs Halappanavar’s death was a tragedy that would never have happened if Ireland’s politicians had lived up to their responsibilities on the issue.

“There have been raped woman and suicidal woman [who have wanted abortions] and that has not been enough to make the government change the legislation regarding abortion in Ireland,” she told Fairfax Media.

“People would ask if it had to get to the situation where somebody died. It should never have gotten to this stage. [Mrs Halappanavar’s death] is an absolute tragedy, and it should have been prevented.”

In 1983 Ireland’s constitution was amended to ban abortion completely. In 1992, the country’s Supreme Court ruled that it was permitted in cases where the mother’s life was at risk, including at risk of suicide. This related to a case in which the government tried to prevent a 14-year-old rape victim from leaving the country to have an abortion overseas.

The 1983 ban is effectively still in place because successive governments have refused to back the Supreme Court decision with legislation.

In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights demanded that Ireland pass legislation to give effect to the court decision. The government then set up an expert panel to report to the Irish Health Minister, who is due to respond by the end of this month.

A poll for the British newspaper The Sunday Times earlier this year found that four out of five Irish voters would back legal changes to permit abortion in cases where a mother’s life was at risk.

First published on smh.com.au

PM attacks BBC payout after show’s failures

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Karen Kissane HERALD CORRESPONDENT

LONDON: The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, joined the chorus of criticism over the payout to the former BBC director-general George Entwistle, as two more senior editors stepped aside over the broadcaster’s decisions on programs investigating child sex abuse.
Mr Entwistle’s deal, in which he received double the money stipulated in his contract, is now likely to be reviewed by Britain’s National Audit Office after a torrent of complaints from MPs of all parties.
Mr Entwistle quit at the weekend, only 54 days into the job, after a furore over the BBC program Newsnight wrongly suggesting that a Conservative peer, later identified as the party’s former treasurer, Lord McAlpine, had been involved in paedophilia in Wales in the 1980s.
Mr Cameron last night said Mr Entwistle’s payout of a year’s salary was “hard to justify”.
The head of news at the BBC, Helen Boaden, and her deputy, Steve Mitchell, both “stepped aside” while the broadcaster investigated why management dropped a Newsnight program investigating child sex abuse allegations against the late BBC presenter Jimmy Savile. Multiple allegations against Savile have surfaced since then.
A BBC report into the McAlpine affair, released on Monday night, linked the two controversies.
The director of BBC Scotland, Ken MacQuarrie, concluded the editorial management of Newsnight had been weakened after the Savile scandal. The editor of Newsnight had been suspended over the decision not to run the Savile documentary, a deputy editor had left the organisation and other deputies were stood aside from making decisions over Savile-related matters.
It was decided late in the process that the program suggesting a Tory peer was a paedophile was “Savile-related” and judgment about it was referred up to a different line of management.
Mr MacQuarrie’s report found that basic journalistic checks and balances, such as correct photo identification of the alleged attacker and the offer of a right of reply to the person accused, were lacking.
The chairman of the BBC Trust, Lord Patten, faces renewed calls for his sacking and was forced to defend his decision to give Mr Entwistle a lump sum of £450,000 ($686,000) on top of his pension.
Lord Patten said in a letter to the parliamentary select committee on media that if Mr Entwistle had not made an “honourable offer” to resign, he would have had to be sacked and would have been entitled to a full year’s notice.
But a Conservative MP on the committee, Philip Davies, said the payout was an affront to taxpayers and demanded Lord Patten be replaced. Asked if he thought getting rid of Lord Patten would increase the instability at the BBC, Mr Davies said: “Lord Patten is part of the problem. He is saying get a grip now because the whole issue is overwhelming him … He has been asleep at the wheel.”
Adding to the broadcaster’s public embarrassment, its new acting director-general, Tim Davie, appeared to lose his temper and walk out of an interview on Sky TV.
Mr Davie, who was appointed at the weekend, repeatedly declined to say whether Mr Entwistle was responsible for the BBC’s flaws and batted away questions about whether more heads would roll before saying he had “a lot to do” and walking off the set.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Paper may be shut over topless pictures

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LONDON

The owner of an Irish tabloid that published paparazzi shots of a topless Duchess of Cambridge has promised to shut down the paper.
Richard Desmond’s company, Northern and Shell, co-owns the Irish Daily Star, which ran 13 of the shots taken of the Duchess sunbathing on a terrace while holidaying in France with her husband at a private chateau.
Insiders say he has told lawyers to start the necessary legal action to close the tabloid. He said, “I am very angry at the decision to publish these photographs and am taking immediate steps to close down the joint venture. The decision to publish … has no justification whatsoever and Northern and Shell condemns it in the strongest possible terms.”
The paper’s website has been taken down in the interim.
St James’s Palace has said the publication of the pictures by the French magazine Closer was “totally unjustifiable”.
“There can be no motivation for this action other than greed.”
Closer’s Italian stablemate Chi, which has also run with the topless pictures, was previously best known for having published photographs of Princess Diana immediately after her fatal car crash.
Both magazines are part of the publishing group Mondadori, which is controlled by the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who once fought a court battle to halt the publication of shots of topless women at his villa in Sardinia, claiming they violated his right to privacy.
France has supposedly strict privacy laws but the fines are not high – a maximum of €45,000 ($56,000). The Cambridges are also suing in the French courts, but that might not net them more than €100,000.
Closer and the other magazines that publish the pictures stand to earn millions from their resale.
In Rome, Alfonso Signorini, the editor of Chi, said he was not afraid of lawsuits because the images are “not damaging to her dignity”.
“They are certainly images of historical import,” Signorini said. “For the first time, the future queen of England is seen in her natural state.”
Signorini dismissed the idea that publishing them might be seen as revenge by Mr Berlusconi on European tabloids that had mocked him. Mr Berlusconi, who left office in November, is facing trial on charges that he paid for sex with an underage prostitute.
But if for the European publications it is a case of publish and be damned, the damnation is coming fast and furious; it is, after all, the only way the British press can get their hooks into a story that must be making their own tabloids salivate.
A media commentator with France’s L’Express magazine, Renaud Revel, has pointed out that it is hypocritical of British media outlets to denounce the pictures: “The world’s gone upside down. English paparazzi are totally lawless.”
Britain’s Sunday Mirror reported that Prince William wanted someone jailed over the photos, and French law does allow for a criminal sentence over breach of privacy. But that will not stop the photos going viral.
In the absence of international privacy legislation, the internet remains a wild and lawless realm, and royal breasts are safe only in captivity.

First published on theage.com.au

Dutch voters back eurozone in election

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LONDON

IN A strong show of support for Europe, Dutch voters have rejected Euro-sceptics and backed two pro-Europe centrist parties.An election that was a litmus test for Dutch willingness to back Europe and the euro during its debt crisis has resulted in Liberal Prime Minister Mark Rutte claiming victory for his centre-right VVD Party.

The centre-left Labour Party was a close second, with vote-counting continuing last night and a coalition government of the two still probable.

The anti-immigrant Freedom Party of far-right firebrand Geert Wilders looked to have been devastated, with an exit poll suggesting its 24 seats could be slashed to as few as 13.

Mr Wilders, a harsh critic of the European Union, had triggered the election by refusing to back Mr Rutte’s plans for an austerity package to rein in the budget deficit.

Mr Wilders had also called for the Netherlands to ditch the euro and leave the European Union.

He complained that the government was ”throwing money over the dykes” to help Greece and Spain while cutting social services to its own people.

The VVD was set to take 41 seats in the 150-member Dutch Parliament, two more than the Labour Party.

Voters also rejected the far-left Socialist Party, which had opposed eurozone rescue deals and had led in polls over the past three months.

The result is an embarrassment for pollsters, who had not predicted the abandonment of smaller anti-Europe parties in favour of the two main players, who have both consistently backed eurozone rescue packages.

In essence, Dutch voters seem to have backed further integration with Europe, despite anger that they were being asked to increase contributions to bail-outs of southern nations.

But there might also have been an element of strategic voting, with voters swinging towards the major parties at the last minute in the hope of pushing the one that best represented their views to victory.

Mr Rutte said the result was an endorsement of his austerity platform: ”This is a strong boost for the agenda that we have laid out for the Netherlands, to go on with our policy in this splendid country.”

Mr Rutte had promised to bring down the Dutch deficit and stimulate the economy – which has been flat because of the eurozone crisis – with budget cuts and investment in infrastructure.

Labour leader Diederik Samsom leaned more towards the fiscal stimulus policies of French president Francois Hollande and had campaigned on job-creation programs.

If the two unite in coalition, there is likely to be a moderation of Mr Rutte’s strong support of the austerity policies championed by German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Mr Rutte had earlier warned against a result that might undermine the close ties between the two nations.

”Will we continue our close relationship with Germany and fighting the euro crisis, or will we shift towards a more France-oriented Europe, which I will be against?” he said after casting his vote.

But Mr Samsom said German-led austerity policies had hurt the Dutch economy: ”It is wrong to assume that this crisis will be solved by a choice between Paris and Berlin. Europe is not about axes. Europe is about co-operation. Otherwise you will never get out of this crisis.”

Mr Wilders, best known for his anti-Muslim views, said of the result, ”I would rather have stood here with good news, but the voter has spoken. We have lost badly.”

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt welcomed exit-poll results, tweeting, ”Looks as if populist anti-Europeans are losing big-time in Dutch election. Distinctly good news.”

A provisional voting result was expected overnight but the official result will not be confirmed until Monday.

First published on theage.com.au

German court opens door to euro rescue

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Austerity, bailout fatigue take toll

A CONSTITUTIONAL crisis for Germany and a financial shock to the euro have been averted by a court decision that will allow Germany to contribute to Europe’s permanent euro bailout fund.
The German Supreme Court last night ruled that it was legal under the constitution for Germany to participate in the bailout, but imposed conditions, including a limit of €190 billion ($234 billion).
If the government wants to contribute more than this to the €700 billion European Stability Mechanism, the decision must be referred to the German parliament for a vote.
This means that heavily indebted countries such as Greece and Spain can continue to receive the support they need in order to avoid bankruptcy.
The court case had threatened the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel and risked plunging European sharemarkets into turmoil and the world economy into a downturn.
The case was mounted by 37,000 petitioners, including the group More Democracy, academics, ordinary Germans and members of Dr Merkel’s own party. They were angry that their taxes were being used to support olive-belt countries they regarded as financially reckless and claimed Germany was taking on “unlimited and irreversible liability risks”.
Germany was the only eurozone country not to have ratified the treaty establishing the ESM. As it is also the largest, the fund had been unable to open for business.
In line with its share capital in the European Central Bank, Germany must give €22 billion in cash to the fund and provide guarantees totalling €170 billion. But critics warn that much more will be required to support the unsteady euro.
The fund’s war chest is not considered enough to finance a full bailout of both Spain and Italy.
The court decision was in line with expectations, with many observers having predicted that the court would be reluctant to bring down either the government or the euro and would likely steer a middle path that set limits.
Mattias Kumm, of Berlin’s Humboldt University, said, “It means that Germany will now be able to move forward and ratify the ESM, providing an additional clarifying interpretation of the conditions under which Germany can assume responsibility. So in effect, this means that the ESM can enter into force.”
It also means that regular reports on where Germans’ money is going will be made public in the run-up to the German federal election.
Meanwhile, voters in The Netherlands went to the polls overnight in a general election triggered by the refusal of Geert Wilders the leader of the Freedom Party, to support cuts to reduce the Dutch deficit.
Opinion polls put radical eurosceptic parties in third and fourth place in elections that were expected to rob Dr Merkel of a key ally as the Netherlands swings to the left, away from Berlin’s doctrine of fiscal discipline and towards French President Francois Hollande’s support for reduced austerity.
Many commentators are predicting the biggest swing to the left in Holland’s history.

First published on theage.com.au

Child witness to family shooting wakes from coma

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LONDON< THE seven-year-old girl who was shot and beaten during an attack in which her parents were killed has regained consciousness in a French hospital with relatives at her side, but has not yet been questioned by police. Zainab al-Hilli is viewed by police as the “key witness” to the shootings last Wednesday in which her mother, father and grandmother and a passing cyclist were gunned down at a tourist spot in the French Alps near Lake Annecy. The chief prosecutor leading the inquiry, Eric Maillaud, said: “She has been in a coma and is under sedatives and cannot be questioned for now. The members of her family who came are by her side. Without doubt, it is their responsibility to inform her of the death of her family. “We hope that the age of seven is the age of reason and that she will be able to provide descriptions about the number of people, whether men or women, the colour of their clothes, and who could have committed this.” Zainab has a fractured skull from a suspected pistol-whipping as well as a gunshot wound to the shoulder. She has been under armed guard in intensive care in hospital at Grenoble and has undergone surgery. Mr Maillaud described her survival as a miracle. She will be questioned by police who specialise in child witnesses. Her sister Zeena, four, who was found cowering under her mother’s legs in the back of the family car eight hours after the bodies were discovered, has flown back to Britain accompanied by relatives, police and a social worker. Mr Maillaud said Zeena had identified family members and described the “fury” and “terror” of the attack to French police. He said she had heard shots and cries but was unable to advance the inquiry. “The most important thing is to get her back to her family.” Last Wednesday, Iraqi-born Saad al-Hilli, his wife Iqbal, her mother Suhaila al-Allaf and passing cyclist Sylvain Mollier, 45, were gunned down by assassins who put two bullets into each person’s head, leading to speculation of a professional hit. A builder working at a house near where the family was killed said he saw their car pass but did not hear any shots fired. Laurent Fillion-Robin told The Times: “You do hear shooting from the hunters sometimes, but I didn’t hear anything that afternoon. Perhaps [the killers] had a silencer.” Meanwhile, a childhood friend of the Hilli brothers has revealed a letter that victim Saad al-Hilli wrote in which he savaged his older brother Zaid, 53, a month after the death of their father, and hinted at a dispute over inheritance. He wrote: “Zaid and I do not communicate any more as he is another control freak and tried a lot of underhanded things even when my father was alive. He tried to take control of father’s assets.” Police are also investigating Saad al-Hilli’s work as an aeronautical design engineer for Surrey Satellite Technology, a company which helped to develop Britain’s first military surveillance satellite. A colleague, Derek Reed, said he did not think his job would have put Mr Hilli at risk.First published in The Age.

French police hunt for at least two gunmen after Alps murders

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LONDON: Two or more killers were last night being hunted over the murders of a family in the French Alps, as police continued to probe the dead father’s relationship with a brother and his work with a defence-satellite technology company.
While French authorities continued to insist they could not say if the killings had been the result of a professional hit, they confirmed each murder victim had received at least three bullets, including two shots to the head, a technique seen as a signature of assassination.
One investigator said: “We know the number of weapons that were used and the kinds that were used. Examination of the grooves on the cartridges and of the system for firing the bullet shows there was more than one killer.”
The seven-year-old daughter of the family, Zainab, was reported to be out of danger following operations to repair a fractured skull. Police said it was not yet known how she had been bludgeoned. There has been speculation she was pistol-whipped. Eric Maillaud, the chief prosecutor overseeing the investigation, said of speculation that Zainab might have been tortured to force her parents to reveal something, said, “This is not the main hypothesis.”
Last Wednesday, British-based aeronautics engineer Saad al-Hilli, 50, his wife Iqbal, 47, their two daughters and a 77-year-old woman thought to be Iqbal’s mother were on holidays in the Alps near Lake Annecy when they were attacked by gunmen.
A cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, 45, is believed to have been passing on the same road but apparently became a witness and was also murdered. He took seven bullets.
The younger daughter, four-year-old Zeena, was found crouching under her mother’s legs eight hours after the bodies were discovered in a BMW near the village of Chevaline.
The Mail on Sunday reported that Mr al-Hilli was working on a secret contract for one of Europe’s biggest defence companies, Surrey Satellites Technology. The newspaper said he was part of a team involved in an undisclosed project linked to European Aeronautic Defence and Space, a company that has contracts with Russia, China and the Foreign Office. Its clients include NASA, the European Space Agency and the British Ministry of Defence contractor Thales.
Claude Moniquet, the director of the Brussels-based European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre, said, “Mr al-Hilli’s company was also a renowned leader in satellite mapping, and if it was secretly doing this in countries which would not welcome such an intrusion, then we have a possible motive.” He also suggested Middle-Eastern groups might have pressured the Iraqi-born Mr al-Hilli for access to technology and killed him for refusing.
Meanwhile Mr al-Hilli’s brother Zaid, who had previously issued a legal caveat to delay the settling of his father’s will, denied a family feud. A cousin who lives in Australia, Ali al-Hilli, told London’s Telegraph that Zaid was in tears when he spoke to him on the telephone after the killings. “He kept saying, ‘Why? Why? Why? How did this happen? … He was clearly devastated. He wasn’t coping.” Ali al-Hilli said he knew of no disagreement over money. He said Zaid al-Hilli was innocent and intended to care for the girls.
Police continued a detailed search of the al-Hillis’ home in Claygate, Surrey, while French police widened their search to Italy and Switzerland, with Mr Maillaud saying it was possible the killers had fled across borders that were only 90 minutes away.
Mr Maillaud said Zeena would soon re-join relatives who had travelled to France to take her home. Zainab, a “key witness”, was still in hospital in an induced coma, he said.
A former head of Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad, John O’Connor, told The Independent he believed the murders were probably the result of a state-sponsored assassination.

First published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The pain in Spain falls on ghost towns

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Half-vacant Sesena is symptomatic of the economic blight in Spain. Karen Kissane reports from Madrid.

THE blunt brown apartment blocks of Sesena rise into the sky and spread wide along the dry paddocks. Around them, dirt from bare ground whirls in the summer wind, crane towers lie piled like matchsticks, and cyclone fencing surrounds the dream that turned to dust.
Block after block of apartments stand shuttered and empty, monuments to the folly and greed of Spain’s “brick bubble” — the property boom that went bust in 2007. Five years later, only 5000 of the 13,000 homes planned for Sesena are completed, and 2000 of those have yet to be sold.
This is the Spanish paradox: as huge property developments all over the country fade into ghost towns, an average of 159 people a day are being evicted because they can no longer pay their mortgages.
Foreclosures have quadrupled, with the courts granting 530,000 eviction orders between 2008 and 2011. Homelessness has increased as an estimated one in five houses — up to 5.6 million homes — stand empty.
An action group, Stop Evictions, has profiled the typical evictees: Spanish-born, with children in their care, and unemployed. The Spanish jobless rate is now the highest in Europe, 23 per cent, and its youth unemployment is a staggering 53 per cent, the worst in the industrial world. This means many people cannot afford to buy a home even though some houses and flats are now one-third the price they were five years ago in the heady days of cheap credit.
A young mother pushing a pram in the otherwise empty streets of Sesena, half an hour’s drive south of Madrid, says she and those in her block have been lucky; they paid only €72,000 ($A87,000) for their fire-sale apartments.
She would like the landscaping to be finished — “This should be garden,” she says, gesturing at the dirt — but her neighbours in the block opposite have a more serious problem: “They are worried and angry; they paid €200,000, big money.”
The property crash has been devastating to Spaniards who, unlike most Europeans, are as obsessed with home ownership as Australians. Retirees have lost their savings, young couples are stuck with big mortgages on houses they cannot sell, and Spanish banks are overloaded with toxic debt.
This week the government of Catalonia, with a budget as big as Portugal’s, became the second region to ask the Spanish government for a financial bailout. It wants an emergency credit line of €5 billion to help fund payments on its €42 billion debt.
In another barometer of rising fear, private depositors in Spanish banks withdrew more money in August than at any time since the country joined the euro.
Meanwhile Sesena has no chemist, its only public transport is a bus to Madrid once an hour, and the ground floors of all its blocks stand shuttered and blank — the retail businesses that were meant to fill them have never eventuated.
A young jogger living in blocks of nearby townhouses — who, like the mother, did not wish to give his name — says he regrets having bought a home in Sesena: “It’s too quiet. If we want to go out and do things, we have to go to Madrid.”
Then, realising he has just talked down his own property value, he bids a quick farewell and jogs off down a weed-filled street of withered front gardens.

First published in The Age.

Breivik found sane, faces life imprisonment

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THE Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has been found responsible for his crimes and faces life in prison.

THE Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has been found responsible for his crimes and faces life in prison.

A panel of five judges led by Judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen, who read the judgment, declared their verdict to be unanimous.

Breivik smiled briefly when he heard the verdict of guilt over terrorism offences and premeditated murder. Earlier he had made a straight-armed fascist salute in court.

The judges effectively found that Breivik was sane when he slaughtered 77 people last year and sentenced him to ”preventive detention”. This is different to a normal prison sentence, which carries a maximum of 21 years.

Breivik will be assessed after 21 years and his sentence could be extended if he is considered to still be a threat to society.

Consignment to a psychiatric ward would have no time limit.

Breivik, who had fought against a finding of insanity because he did not want to be dismissed as a madman, had said psychiatric care would be ”worse than death”.

Breivik was charged with terrorism offences after twin attacks on July 22 last year. He set off a 950-kilogram car bomb in central Oslo that killed eight people, then took a boat to Utoeya Island where he strode around dressed in police uniform and shot 69 people, most of them teenagers, who were attending a summer camp for the youth wing of Norway’s Labour Party. He injured 242 people.

Breivik, 33, claimed he was fighting the ”Islamicisation” of Norway and Europe and called on others to join his crusade against left-wing multiculturalists and the immigration of Muslims.

The question for the court had not been whether Breivik committed the atrocities – he admitted his actions – but whether he was mad or bad, which would determine whether he should be hospitalised or jailed.

Psychiatrists had been divided over his mental state. The first court-appointed panel found him to be a paranoid schizophrenic but a second, while diagnosing several disorders, declared he would not have been psychotic when he committed the attacks.

The prosecution had called for him to be sent to a psychiatric hospital. Breivik himself said he was sane and demanded jail, to enhance what he saw as his status as a national hero, a right-wing cultural warrior defending his people against invasion.

The victims’ families had wanted him to be found sane so he could be held responsible for what they saw as a political crime. Seventy per cent of Norwegians polled shared this view.

After the verdict a survivor, Eivind Rindal, told a Norwegian newspaper: ”The most important thing is that he never gets out. There are many who share his extreme views in our society.”

A bereaved relative said: ”Now he will be locked up for life and we can forget about him.”

The court’s decision means there will be no appeal. One of his lawyers, Geir Lippestad, had promised that his client would not contest a jail sentence.

The gunman is expected to live a regimented life at the high-security Ila prison near Oslo.

Breivik has spent his time in detention writing his memoirs, according to another of his lawyers, Tord Jordet. He plans to finish the book in the first half of next year and has received unconfirmed offers from publishers in southern Europe, Mr Jordet said.

The killings shone a spotlight on far-right extremism and tensions over multiculturalism in a country that had previously been noted for its peacefulness.

There is a growing consensus in Norway that the feeling of national unity, symbolised by the huge ”rose marches” in which hundreds of thousands marched in defiance during the aftermath of the attacks, has slowly ebbed away as the country becomes divided over the issues of rising immigration and cultural integration.

Thorbjoern Jagland, a former prime minister and the chairman of the Nobel peace prize committee, believes Norway learnt nothing from the tragedy: ”People at the political level have been more cautious regarding the debate around integration and Muslims, but if you look at what is going on at the grassroots level it has not changed.”

Kari Helene Partapuoli, of Oslo’s anti-racist centre, said the government had not started programs to improve cultural awareness.

First published in The Age.