No Norway trial before next year: Prosecutor

Acting prosecutor says that given the huge and demanding investigation, the police need time.

OSLO: Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik will not be brought to trial before next year, the country's top prosecutor said Thursday, ruling out the laying of formal charges until at least January.

"We hope that we can conduct the court trial in the course of next year," the king's general prosecutor Tor Aksel Busch – the country's highest legal officer – told public broadcasters NRK.

The indictment for the 32-year-old, in solitary custody after acknowledging responsibility for 76 deaths in a shooting spree and bomb attacks, "will not be ready before the end of the year,"

"That's the starting point," he said. "And then, we'll see how long we will need next year."

Acting prosecutor Ingunn Fossgard told AFP on Thursday that given the "huge and demanding investigation, the police need time."

Police have so far cited the law on terrorism as the basis for possible charges, provoking public uproar given that the longest likely sentence would be 21 years – amounting to just weeks for every one of Behring Breivik's victims.

But prosecutor Christian Hatlo said this week that police are also envisaging charging him with "crimes against humanity" for the bombing of Oslo's government district and the shooting of participants in a youth camp on a nearby island.

(Read: Sad smugness after Oslo)

A conviction on this charge would carry a 30-year sentence.

"All possibilities are being explored," Fossgard said.

Behring Breivik admitted carrying out the attacks at his first court appearance on Monday when he was remanded in custody for eight weeks.

The 32-year-old says he was on a crusade to save Norway and Western Europe from a Muslim invasion and that the attacks targeting the Labour Party-led government and its youth wing were "cruel" but "necessary."

(Read: Anders Behring Breivik — a home-grown monster)