Anders Behring Breivik trial, day three - Wednesday 18 April
• Breveik says inspired by Serb nationalists, not Nazis
• Claims to have met Serb 'war criminal' in Liberia
• Insists Knights Templar group was real
• Accuses prosecutor of ridiculing him
Read the latest Guardian news report on proceedings
Read today's summary
• Claims to have met Serb 'war criminal' in Liberia
• Insists Knights Templar group was real
• Accuses prosecutor of ridiculing him
Read the latest Guardian news report on proceedings
Read today's summary
Anders Behring Breivik sitting in the witness box is interrogated by the prosecution during the third day of his trial in Oslo. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images
Here's a summary of today's proceedings:
• Anders Behring Breivik said he should either be acquitted or executed, describing the maximum jail term of 21 years as a "pathetic punishment". He said he did not wish to be executed "but would have respected it". • On his second day of questioning by the prosecution, he showed several signs of frustration, accusing his interrogator variously of ridiculing him, "delegitimising" him and calling him a liar. He refused to answer a number of questions. Amid suspicions that he could not verify information in his manifesto he insisted that he did not want to help the prosecutor and/or was protecting others.
• Breivik said his actions on 22 July last year were inspired by "Serb nationalists" as he attempted to distance himself from the "old school" of rightwing extremism propagated by the Nazis.
• The accused claimed that he met a Serb nationalist wanted for war crimes when he visited Liberia in 2002. He refused to name the man in question but Norwegian police suspect he was referring to former paramilitary commander Milorad Ulemek, who was convicted of assassinating Serbia's pro-western prime minister Zoran Djindjic. However, police are not sure whether the pair actually met, and Ulemek's lawyer claims they have not.
• Asked if the real reason he went to Liberia was to buy diamonds, the defendant insisted that he adopted the guise of a diamond trader as a "cover".
• Facing scepticism from the prosecution, Breivik insisted that the the Knights Templar (KT) anti-Islam network he claimed to be a member of was real and that he did attend a meeting of the group in London in 2002. But he gave conflicting evidence about the group and his role within it. He described the KT as both a grass roots movement and a series of one man cells. He also said he was a "cell commander" when he came back from the KT meeting in London but later said that that was incorrect. He also failed to explain how he came up with his estimation that there were 15 to 80 members in KT but insisted there were more than 15.
• Breivik talked about the "English protestant host" in London who became his "mentor" but refused to reveal his identity. That man is named in his manifesto, as Richard the Lionheart. Shortly after the 22 July massacre, Paul Ray, who writes a blog under the name Lionheart, said he belonged to an anti-Muslim group called The Ancient Order of the Templar Knights but denied ever meeting Breivik and said he was horrified by the killings (see 10.29am).
• The defendant repeated the claim made to police after his arrest that there were two other cells in Norway ready to attack and said that could happen "any day".
• He described al-Qaida as "methodological role models" for militant nationalists but said the extremist group are "expansionist" while he is "isolationist".
The chief judge, Elisabeth Arntzen, brings today's proceedings to a close.
She says tomorrow will focus on the events leading up to 22 July last year and the bomb in the government quarter of Oslo.I'll post a summary of the day's events shortly.
Asked whether he wants an ethnically pure Norway, Breivik responds that he can accept 2% of the population not being so.
Breivik: I'd prefer execution to prison
Gunman tells Oslo court he would rather face capital punishment than 'pathetic' maximum sentence
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