Norway revises deadly attack account: no bow and arrow and doubts over terrorism

In further explaining the revisions, police Inspector Per Thomas Omholt told reporters that the suspect, a 37-year-old Danish man, did not take his professed conversion to Islam “very seriously” — comments that could become part of a wider review over the police response and the initial announcements linking the attack with possible Islamist radicalization.

Norway’s Police Service Service, known as the PST, said it was launching an independent probe of the responses by police and security agencies.

“Given the seriousness of the matter, it is very important that learning points and any weaknesses and errors are identified quickly in order to be able to implement measures immediately,'' the PST said in a statement.

The suspect was held in a medical facility pending psychiatric evaluation and “a full judicial observation” into his mental state, police said Friday.

Police say the attacks appear to have started at a Coop Extra supermarket in Kongsberg, about 40 miles west of the capital, Oslo. An off-duty police officer — who was among at least three people injured — emerged from the store with an arrow lodged in his back, warning others to get away, witnesses told Norway’s public broadcaster.

One of them said she saw a person carrying arrows in a basket over the shoulder. The alleged attacker later appeared nearby without the archery equipment and stabbed people seemingly at random, Omholt said Monday.

“Some were killed inside their own homes, others out in public,” he said. Officers seized “stabbing weapons linked to” the attack, he added but, he would not specify the type of armament because they were still collecting witness testimonies.

Police have also cast doubt on claims that the suspect was a Muslim convert, and Omholt has said that while the man had professed this before, he did not appear “serious.”

In a statement on Monday, police said that “illness appears to be the most probable hypothesis in terms of motive for the action.”

Police have charged the man they identified as Espen Andersen Brathen, who they say appeared to act alone and has confessed. So far he faces five counts of murder but no terror charges.

Residents lay flowers and lit candles for those who died: four women and a man, aged between 52 and 78-years-old. It was the worst mass killing in the Scandinavian country since 2011, when a right-wing extremist killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting.

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