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Norway Bow-and-Arrow Attack Suspect Transferred to Health Services

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A frame grab made Oct. 14, 2021, from a video posted online by and showing Espen Andersen Braathen, a 37-year-old Danish citizen, who was arrested Wednesday night.
A frame grab made Oct. 14, 2021, from a video posted online by and showing Espen Andersen Braathen, a 37-year-old Danish citizen, who was arrested Wednesday night.

A man suspected of killing five people with a bow and arrow and other weapons in Norway was in the care of health professionals Friday, police said.

Investigators have named the suspect as Espen Andersen Braathen, a 37-year-old Danish citizen who has lived for most of his life in Kongsberg, where the attacks took place Wednesday.

He has acknowledged killing the victims, investigators have said.

He was "transferred into the care of health services after an assessment of his health situation," police said. They did not go into further details about his condition.

Later Friday, a court ruled he could be held for up to four weeks in pre-trial detention.

Braathen is a convert to Islam who had shown signs of radicalization, police said. He also has a history of being "in and out" of health institutions, the force added, without elaborating.

He will be subjected to a full psychiatric evaluation, his lawyer Fredrik Neumann said on Thursday. Police said the attacks took place over "a large area" of Kongsberg, a town and municipality about 70 kilometers west of the capital, Oslo.

Four women and one man, aged between 50 and 70, were killed in what police have said appeared to be a random "act of terror." Three others, including an off-duty police officer, were wounded.

A student told Reuters how he and his friends shut themselves in his bedroom as the attacker tried to get into his home.

Police have said Braathen is cooperating with the investigation. A trial will not take place for months.

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, who took office Thursday after winning elections last month, will visit Kongsberg Friday with Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl.

The death toll was the worst of any attack in Norway since 2011, when far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people, most of them teenagers at a youth camp.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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