The 21-year sentence issued for mass murderer Anders Breivik is a proof of the functionality of the Norwegian legal system and should not be considered “naivety,” Norwegian Ambassador to Turkey Janis Bjorn Kanavin has told the Hürriyet Daily News.
His remarks were an indirect response to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s recent criticism of the Scandinavian country when justifying his
recent suggestion that capital punishment should be reinstated in the Turkish legal system.
“We did not succumb to the temptation to say that an extreme crime requires extreme measures, or measures beyond what is described in law,” Kanavin said in a recent interview. He said that although Brevik’s crime was “out of proportion to anything that had ever happened in Norway,” the country had still managed to remain within the boundaries of the law and not change it according to the crime.
Last week, Erdoğan said that the prison sentence given to Breivik was insufficient and that he should have been given the death penalty instead to ensure peace for the families of the victims.
Source: Turkish Weekly, November 20, 2012