A Norwegian man who murdered his Chinese-born stepsister and then opened fire on a mosque last year was sentenced Thursday to 21 years in prison, the maximum penalty under Norwegian law.
Twenty-two-year-old Philip Manshaus offered no apologies or regrets for his crimes and said he wished he could have caused more bloodshed.
Prosecutors called him “an extremely dangerous person,” and Judge Annika Lindstroem dismissed defense arguments that Manshaus was insane who claimed to be defending himself and others from “the enemy,” and believed “the white race is on the brink of extinction.”
Manshaus was sentenced to two decades in “preventative detention,” which is given to criminals deemed to be a danger to society.
Manshaus killed his 17-year-old stepsister Johanne Zhangjia Ihle-Hansen by shooting her four times with a hunting rifle. She was adopted from China when she was 2 years old, and her mother later married Manshaus’s father.
After murdering Ihle-Hansen, Manshaus drove to a nearby mosque in an Oslo suburb and opened fire at the front door.
A mosque member overpowered him before he could get inside, where prosecutors say he was looking to set the building on fire.
Lindstroem said Manshaus was inspired by the March 2019 massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the attack on Hispanics outside a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, also in 2019.
