The suspected perpetrator of the fatal Oslo shooting, described by police as an extremist Islamist with fragile mental health, was remanded Monday for four weeks.
Now officially identified as Zaniar Matapour, the 43-year-old suspect will also not be able to have any contact (visit, mail, etc.) with the outside world until July 25, the Oslo court has decided.
This Norwegian of Iranian origin is suspected of having killed two men aged 54 and 60 and injured 21 others when he opened fire near a gay bar in downtown Oslo on Friday night to Saturday as the LGBT Pride March festivities were in full swing.
The Norwegian police are still trying to determine the motives for this attack.
Suspected of “terrorist act”, homicide and attempted homicide, Zaniar Matapour refuses at this stage to be heard for fear, according to his lawyer, that the video recordings of his interrogations will be manipulated by the investigators. He must be the subject of a preliminary observation by experts in order to shed light on the question of his mental health, and therefore of his criminal responsibility.
Already on the radar
On the radar of the Norwegian domestic intelligence services (PST), responsible for anti-terrorism, since 2015 amid concerns about radicalization, he belongs, according to the police, to “an extremist Islamist network”.
The police say they are working on several theories: the attack motivated by ideology, the hate crime against the homosexual community, the gesture of an unbalanced person, even a combination of several factors.
The PST claims not to have detected “violent intentions” when the services had an interview with him last month.
The way the police and the PST handled the episode will be assessed, announced the Minister of Justice, Emilie Enger Mehl.
Arrived in Norway in his childhood, Zaniar Matapour, today a father living on social benefits according to the media, has been implicated and convicted on several occasions for relatively minor acts in the past.
The Nordic ministers for regional cooperation gathered at the scene of the tragedy on Monday, ensuring in a joint declaration “to stand up with the LGBTI community and against all forms of violence”.
The Pride march, which was to be held Saturday afternoon in Oslo for the first time in three years because of COVID, has been postponed indefinitely