MOSCOW, August 22 - RAPSI. RAPSI will host live text coverage of the verdict expected to be handed down Friday against confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik. Join in at 11.30 Moscow time (GMT+4).

The 33-year-old Norwegian has admitted to having killed 77 people by way of twin attacks carried out in Oslo and on nearby Utoya Island on July 22, 2011.

While Breivik has confessed to having killed eight people in an Oslo bombing, and to having gunned down another 69 at a nearby youth camp in 2011, he has refrained from admitting guilt for the crimes that he has been charged with in this connection. In the mind of the 33-year-old Norwegian - whose sanity has posed a central issue throughout the trial - he was acting in “self-defense,” his actions having been necessitated by what he perceived as the threat of multiculturalism in Norway. As such, he has requested acquittal.

Breivik was arrested on the scene of the youth camp massacre and was formally charged in March with acts of terrorism and voluntary manslaughter.

The central issue to be resolved during the course of the proceedings was that of whether Breivik is of sound mind. From the start, Breivik has insisted on his own sanity. If he is found to have been of sound mind in carrying out the 2011 massacres, he faces up to 21 years in prison. In case his mental state is determined to have been unsound, he will spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric ward built especially for him.