The Norwegian police had initially stated that the victims had been killed by arrows drawn with the arc. More than a dozen people have actually been targeted by such a weapon, but none has been mortally affected.
Le Monde with AFP
The Norwegian police returned, Monday, October 18, on the unfolding of the attack in which five people were killed on Wednesday. The victims were killed with the white weapon, not by arrows drawn with a bow, as was initially announced.
“At a certain moment, [the suspect] gets rid or loses his bow and his arrows,” said Inspector Per Thomas Omholt by making the story of the attack at a press conference. “In Hyttegata, he kills five people with the white weapon at a time in private places and in the public space,” he continued. The police, who had until then declared that the suspect, Espen Andersen Brathhen, was armed with a bow and arrows as well as two other weapons, did not want to specify the nature of these white weapons for the needs of the ‘survey.
“All indicates that these victims were randomly killed,” also said PER THOMAS OMHOLT. According to the police, more than a dozen people have also been targeted by archery at the beginning of the attack, but none was then mortally affected.
Psychiatric assessment of the suspect. In progress
Suspected of Islamist radicalization, Espen Andersen Brathian, a 37-year-old Danish, acknowledged that he had killed five people and wounded three more Wednesday in Kongsberg, a southeastern city of Norway. “As for the reason, the disease remains the main hypothesis. And as regards conversion to Islam, this hypothesis is weakened,” added Per Thomas Omholt. Placed in pre-trial detention in a medical institution, the suspect, which has already explained at length and has probably acted alone, is no longer able to be heard. A psychiatric assessment is underway to determine whether it can be held for criminally responsible for its gesture.
Criticized for more than half an hour to stop Brathhen after receiving the first alerts, the police at first seemed to favor the track of the terrorist act before focusing on that of madness. Established for years in Kongsberg, a small town of about 25,000 inhabitants, 80 kilometers southwest of Oslo, Espen Andersen Brathian has, according to the authorities, medical history, whose nature is unknown at this stage. The suspect was known with Norwegian security services, PST, including anti-terrorism.
The police reported “fears of a radicalization” which was 2020 and before, which, she assured, had given rise to follow-up. According to the NRK public broadcast, a first alert had been received in 2015, and the PST had issued one in 2018 on the possibility that the suspect makes “a small scale attack”. This information raised questions on the measures put in place by the authorities to avoid a passage to the act.