Undercover of The Knights.

Anders Breivik's assertion that his horrifying attacks in Oslo were carried out on behalf of a shadowy network of anti-Islamic extremists seem to be the point upon which the case of his sanity hinges: if it's true, and the "Knights Templars" really exist, then he's not only sane (or at least saneish), but clearly a grim harbinger of further atrocities yet to come; if it turns out that the Knights Templars - as he describes them - are merely a delusional concoction of Dan Brown-style fantasy and too much "Assassin's Creed" games, then he's to be deemed a stone bonker and will more than likely live out the rest of his days in a rubber room - probably wearing a fetching Hannibal Lecter get-up.  That seems to be about the size of it, if I read the news aright - but is it?  I hardly think so.
There's a lot of talk about Breivik's claims to be linked to a Terror Network - either a real one or some imaginary one that has seeped through from the homicidal swamp of his underbrain into his mouth - but nobody seems to have seriously considered the possibility that it's all a load of crap.  No; it's condidered as a "delusion"; it's seen as evidence of some extreme and complex form of paranoia or some such; it's being judged as pure, unmitigated, lunacy.  That it's simply something he's dreamed up to cover himself in the event of being busted doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone.
Think about it, though, cats and kittens: if somebody knows they're about to kill seventy-odd people (and it's fair to assume he had at least that number in mind: car-bombing is, of course, an inexact science) in a horrifying, public manner, the possibility of having their collar felt surely must cross their mind to some extent.  Thus they find themselves considering contingency plans: clearly they're never going to see the light of day again, so it becomes a question of whether they're going to spend an incarcerated lifetime in solitary, awaiting the inevitable hors d'oeuvre of ground-up glass in whatever the Norwegian equivalent of bread-and-water is, or if it might not be better to kick back in a nice snug straitjacket with three mashed-banana-and-Thorazine cocktails a day.  I know which one I'd go for, I'll tell you that.
Of course, people are wise to the old dodges these days: overt pleas of insanity are viewed with suspicion, and thanks to Son of Sam, it's no use telling the court that "a dog made me do it".  On the other hand, a carefully-prepared "compendium" of manifestos and other deranged-looking screeds could well be enough to muddy the waters and point the beak's mind toward foam-rubber furnishings.  And let's face it: if that is the case, using the name of the Templars is a corking wheeze, is it not?  Even though Breivik claims that the inaugural meeting of this little crew was in 2002 - so they're presumably not the same Knights Templar that rotate with the Greys and the Illuminati in the rants of the tin-foil millinery fraternity - the very name instantly flags up any amount of associations with those unwilling or unable to subscribe to "conspiracy theories".  It's a masterstroke of diversion only excelled by having your brief try to prove that you're sane at the same time as you're presenting yourself as being madder than a packet of crisps in a Homburg hat.
What is notable about this dreadful case is that there seems to be a certain amount of reluctance in some quarters to accept that Breivik's organisation exists: it would suit a lot of people for him to be written off as a solitary nut-case rather than to acknowledge that a cadre of bloodthirsty racists exists and flourishes under the leadership of an enigmatic Serbian "war hero". Very few people in The Establishment ever questioned the provenance of al-Qua'eda, as I recall; it seemed perfectly feasible that there are any number of dark-skinned beard-gnashers setting their sights upon the West - yet that there might be a corresponding group of WHITE extremists is something many in power don't want to talk about...Rather odd that, eh?  No; I suppose it isn't, really - more par for the course than anything.
Regardless of that, Breivik is clearly a politically-motivated murderer; a hate-filled, hysterical fanatic that should be treated as such.  Terrorists may often be called "crazed", but they're hardly ever given the benefit of psychiatric evaluation.  Certainly the Navy S.E.A.L.s that gunned down Osama bin Laden weren't carrying any Rorschach cards along with their M-16s, and nobody ever recommended Group Therapy for the "bhoys" in the H-Block.  I'm reluctant to bandy terms like "good" and "evil" about in a world without absolutes, but it's hard to think of any other way of looking at a man who callously ended 77 lives and has freely admitted he'd "do it all again" - to designate Anders Breivik as a mentalist might be very easy (even compassionate, from a certain point of view), but it's simply wrong.