An Iranian-born Norwegian man was found guilty of terrorism on Thursday in a 2022 attack on an LGBTQ festival in Oslo and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Two people were killed and nine were seriously wounded in the shooting at three locations, chiefly outside the London Pub, a popular gay bar, on June 25, 2022.
The Oslo District Court said Zaniar Matapour, 45, fired 10 rounds with a machine gun and eight shots with a handgun into the crowd. Prosecutors said Matapour has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group.
Matapour was overpowered by bystanders after the attack and arrested. Following the attack, a Pride parade was cancelled, with police saying they could not guarantee security.
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The shooting shocked Norway, which has a relatively low crime rate but has experienced a series of “lone wolf” attacks by individuals in recent decades, including one of the worst mass shootings in Europe. In 2011, a right-wing extremist killed 69 people on the island of Utoya after setting off a bomb in Oslo that left eight dead.
Six days before the attack, Norway’s external intelligence agency, E-Tjenesten, learned from an undercover agent that a possible action was expected in a Nordic country and the information was passed to the domestic security service.
Matapour had pleaded innocent via his lawyer. He was examined by a court-appointed psychiatrist who concluded that he was sane at the time of the attack.
Prosecutors had asked for a 30-year sentence. Matapour’s lawyer had sought acquittal, saying his client had been provoked to carry out the attack by an E-Tjenesten agent who was pretending to be a high-ranking member of the Islamic State group.
The trial started in March and ended on May 16.
