OSLO, Norway -- Norwegian authorities could have prevented or interrupted the bomb and gun attacks by a far-right fanatic that killed 77 people last year, a government appointed commission said Monday.

The long-awaited report into the July 22, 2011, attacks also said the domestic intelligence service could have done more to track down the gunman, but stopped short of saying it could have stopped him.

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Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has admitted to the bombing of the government's headquarters in Oslo, which killed eight people, and the subsequent shooting spree at a youth camp that left 69 dead, more than half of them teenagers. He is currently awaiting sentencing.

Bombing 'could have been prevented,' report finds
While noting that the attacks "may be the most shocking and incomprehensible acts ever experienced in Norway," the 500-page report said the bombing "could have been prevented" if already adopted security measures had been implemented more effectively.

Breivik was able to park a van with a fertilizer bomb just outside the high-rise before he drove another car to the Labor Party's youth camp on Utoya, unhindered.

The report said that a car bomb "at the government complex and several coordinated attacks have been recurring scenarios in threat assessments as well as for safety analyses and exercise scenarios for many years."

Anders Breivik: I was motivated by goodness and 'would have done it again'

Police blunders
The police response was also slowed down by a series of blunders, including flaws in communication systems and the breakdown of an overloaded boat carrying a police anti-terror unit. Meanwhile, Norway's only police helicopter was left unused, its crew on vacation. Breivik's shooting spree lasted for more than one hour before he surrendered to police.

Norway massacre: Nation remembers victims one year later

The report said that a faster police response could have stopped Breivik's shooting spree earlier, but recognized that "hardly anyone could have imagined" the secondary attack on Utoya.

"Sadly, however, after repeated school massacres in other countries, an armed desperado who shoots adolescents is indeed conceivable — also in Norway," it added.

Though Breivik has admitted the attacks, he rejected criminal guilt during his trial, saying his victims had betrayed their country by embracing a multicultural society.

Prosecutors have said there were doubts about his sanity and suggested Breivik be committed to compulsory psychiatric care instead of prison. A ruling is set for Aug. 24.

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An expert sociologist says the testimony of far-right mass killer Anders Breivik should not be curtailed because his “repellent” views and rambling speech will actually put people off extremism.

Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen, who has been called as an expert witness in Breivik’s trial, said self-confessed killer’s beliefs about immigration were “widely shared” in an interview with British broadcaster ITN. 

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In a scene unimaginable in many countries, Breivik this week got the chance to explain his fanatical views to the court and the world, unrepentant and dressed in a business suit. Prosecutors and lawyers for the families of his 77 victims even shook his hand.

The 33-year-old far-right militant gave a rambling hour-long address to the court on Tuesday, reading from a statement that essentially summarized the 1,500-page anti-Islamic manifesto he posted online before his bomb-and-shooting rampage nine months ago.

"The attacks on July 22 were a preventive strike. I acted in self-defense on behalf of my people, my city, my country," Breivik declared, demanding to be found innocent of terror and murder charges. "I would have done it again."

Breivik: I was motivated by goodness and 'would have done it again'

Breivik has five days to explain why he detonated a bomb outside government headquarters in Oslo, killing eight people, then drove to a nearby resort island, where he massacred 69 others, mostly teens, at a summer youth camp run by the governing Labor Party.

Breivik, who has admitted carrying out the grisly acts, boasted they were the most "spectacular" by a nationalist militant since World War II.

Breivik’s speech, which angered victims’ family members who were present, was not broadcast on television because of a court order preventing live feeds during the killer's testimony.

However, Professor Eriksen told ITN Breivik's speech was more likely to harm his cause.

Eriksen said:

"Parts of his world view are clearly widely shared, not by a majority but by substantial groups who feel globalization is not going their way, that their country is being invaded by a foreign alien enemy Muslims and feel that they are being ruled by spineless multiculturalists who don't see the dangers of Islam.

"I've been of two minds myself but I've reached a conclusion that it's a good thing to give him this platform because he doesn't appear credible, he's not very charismatic - he does't have ... the appeal that would attract people so I think he works more like a repellent, a mosquito repellent against right-wing extremism because people who see him realize how bad it would get if they are attracted to these crazy notions of purity of race."

On Monday, Norwegian prosecutors and even lawyers representing the families of victims shook Breivik's hand as the trial opened, raising some eyebrows. Prosecutors shaking hands with defendants would be a rare sight in the U.S., as well as in neighboring Sweden and other Nordic nations.

"That was a bit strange," said John Christian Elden, who represents some survivors but is not participating in the trial.

Breivik had asked to wear a uniform in court in pretrial hearings but was rebuffed, and he appeared at the trial in a business suit and tie, his thinning hair neatly combed.

"We don't have orange jumpsuits and that kind of thing in Norway," his lawyer Geir Lippestad said. "This is a completely normal way to dress in a Norwegian court, even in a serious criminal matter."

'Childishly defiant'
On Wednesday Breivik  told the court he had been inspired by Serbian nationalism.

Anders Breivik to Norway court: I killed 77 people but am not guilty

Asked how he had changed from a teenage vandal on Oslo's prosperous west side to a methodical killer, he said he helped found a militant group called the "Knights Templar" in 2001 but refused to give any details to back up the claim. 

The original Knights Templar were a medieval brotherhood of European knights that pursued anti-Islamic crusades. 

Breivik deflected five straight questions about supposed allies and repeatedly tried to tell prosecutors how to phrase themselves. He became visibly irritated and swiveled a pen in his hand. 

Breivik's trial, to last 10 weeks, turns on the question of his sanity and thus whether he can be jailed. He has said that an insanity ruling would be "worse than death." 

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He came off as "childishly defiant," Tore Sinding Bekkedal, a survivor of the island massacre, said during a break on Wednesday. "He's trying to steer the proceedings and failing." 

If found mentally sane — the key issue to be decided in the trial — Breivik could face a maximum 21-year prison sentence or an alternate custody arrangement that would keep him locked up as long as he is considered a menace to society.

If declared insane he would be committed to psychiatric care for as long as he's considered ill.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik was sane when he killed 77 people last summer in attacks he saw as punishing "traitors" who favored immigration, a psychiatric team said on Tuesday, in a report contradicting an earlier one that found him psychotic.

Breivik himself has insisted he is mentally stable and demanded that the attacks - the most violent in Norway since World War Two - be judged as a political act rather than the work of a deranged mind.

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"The mental health experts' main conclusion is that defendant Anders Behring Breivik is considered not to have been psychotic at the time of the actions on July 22, 2011," Oslo District Court said in a statement.

A report completed in November found Breivik to be a psychotic who also suffered from paranoid schizophrenia during and after the July 22 attacks.

A final ruling on Breivik's mental condition will be made by a five-judge panel near the end of his trial. The latest report could give the judges grounds to sentence Breivik to prison if found guilty.

His trial on terror and murder charges is due to start next week and is expected to last 10 weeks.

Breivik, 33, has admitted detonating a bomb that killed eight people at government headquarters in Oslo, then massacring 69 people with gunfire at a Labor Party summer camp. Most of the summer camp victims were teenagers.

In a preliminary court hearing Breivik denied criminal guilt and suggested his actions were part of a war to save European culture.

If Breivik is found guilty and the judges side with the latest psychiatric report, he could face 21 years in prison with the potential for indefinite extensions to prevent him from repeating his crimes.

If he is eventually ruled psychotic, Breivik would likely face an indefinite period of psychiatric care in a locked facility.

Breivik's defense team has said its primary goal at the trial would be to prove their client sane.

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A Norwegian court on Friday ordered a new psychiatric evaluation of confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, after an earlier report found him legally insane.

Judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen said in Oslo the new evaluation is necessary considering widespread criticism of the initial findings, which suggested Breivik should be sent to psychiatric care instead of prison.

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The 32-year-old Norwegian has confessed to a bomb and shooting spree July 22 that killed 77 people and traumatized the peaceful Scandinavian country.

Breivik denies criminal guilt, saying he's a commander of a resistance movement aiming to overthrow European governments and replace them with "patriotic" regimes that would deport Muslim immigrants.

Investigators have found no sign of such a movement and say Breivik most likely plotted and carried out the attacks on his own.

Arntzen said two Norwegian psychiatrists — Agnar Aspaas and Terje Toerrisen — had been appointed for the new evaluation.

However, Breivik doesn't want to talk to them because he doesn't believe they will understand him any better than the experts who interviewed him for the first assessment, defense lawyer Geir Lippestad, told reporters after speaking to his client in prison.

Lippestad also said that the defense team is skeptical toward a new evaluation because the first assessment was leaked to Norwegian media.

"We want evidence to be presented in court and not in the media," Lippestad told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

Before the court's decision, Breivik rejected the need for a new evaluation in a motion filed by Lippestad.

The first court-ordered assessment found Breivik was psychotic during the attacks, which would make him mentally unfit to be convicted and imprisoned for the country's worst peacetime massacre.

Prosecutors said that report, submitted in November, describes Breivik as a paranoid schizophrenic living in a "delusional universe."

That conclusion drew criticism from many outside experts who questioned whether someone who is suffering from a grave mental illness could carry out such a well-planned attack.

Arntzen also noted that staff at Ila prison in Oslo, where Breivik is being held in pretrial detention, say they haven't observed any signs suggesting he is psychotic.

"These circumstances point toward letting independent experts conduct a new evaluation of the suspect's accountability," Arntzen said.

Asked what would happen if the new assessment conflicts with the first one, Arntzen said both reports would be considered by the court when the trial starts in April.

Breivik has told investigators he set off the fertilizer bomb that ripped through Oslo's government district on July 22, killing eight people. He then opened fire at the summer camp of the governing Labor Party's youth wing on the island of Utoya, where sixty-nine people were killed before Breivik surrendered to a SWAT team.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.