Connect With Us on Twitter
Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Anders Behring Breivik - The New York Times
Anders Behring Breivik - The New York Times
Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian, killed 77 people in a bombing and a shooting rampage in Oslo and on Utoya Island, a summer camp for young political activists, on July 22, 2011.
Mr. Breivik, a right-wing extremist, admitted to the slayings in a court hearing shortly afterward, but denied criminal guilt, portraying the victims as “traitors” for embracing multiculturalism and Muslim immigration policies.
On March 7, 2012, Mr. Breivik, 33, was indicted on terror and murder charges for the killings. The central issue in the trial will be whether he is insane.
Two court-ordered psychiatric reports have contradictory conclusions. The first report, released in November 2011, determined that Mr. Breivik was a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic before, during and after the attacks. The second, in April 2012, said he was sane, albeit with a narcissistic personality disorder.
His trial, which is expected to last 10 weeks, opened on April 16. By turns defiant, impassive and tearful, Mr. Breivik proclaimed that he acted in self-defense, bore no criminal guilt and rejected the authority of the court. He had previously denied criminal responsibility on the ground that he was protecting Norway against Islamic immigration.
In remarkable evidence played to a packed and shocked courtroom, recordings of cellphone calls made by the gunman to the police suggested that he tried twice to give himself up and simply went on killing in the absence of officers to accept his surrender. In the period after the first call to his final shot being fired, prosecutors said, 41 people died. There has been much questioning of why the police took more than an hour to reach the island after the gunman launched the attack.
Depicted as a Loner Obsessed With Computer Games
On the second day of the trial, Mr. Breivik described the deaths as “the most spectacular sophisticated political act in Europe since the Second World War” and said he would do it over again. He rejected an assessment by one psychiatrist that he suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder. “July 22 wasn’t about me. July 22 was a suicide attack. I wasn’t expecting to survive that day,” he said.
On the third and fourth days of the trial, prosecutors pressed Mr. Breivik on his extremist affiliations. He insisted that he belonged to a “cell” within an organization with members across Europe. He sweated and equivocated through skeptical prosecutors’ questioning about his trips to Liberia and London in 2002, during which he says he met a Serbian war criminal and was a founder of the organization, the Knights Templar. Prosecutors say the group does not exist.
Anders Behring Breivik
Pool photo by Hakon Mosvold Larsen
Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian, killed 77 people in a bombing and a shooting rampage in Oslo and on Utoya Island, a summer camp for young political activists, on July 22, 2011.
Mr. Breivik, a right-wing extremist, admitted to the slayings in a court hearing shortly afterward, but denied criminal guilt, portraying the victims as “traitors” for embracing multiculturalism and Muslim immigration policies.
On March 7, 2012, Mr. Breivik, 33, was indicted on terror and murder charges for the killings. The central issue in the trial will be whether he is insane.
Two court-ordered psychiatric reports have contradictory conclusions. The first report, released in November 2011, determined that Mr. Breivik was a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic before, during and after the attacks. The second, in April 2012, said he was sane, albeit with a narcissistic personality disorder.
His trial, which is expected to last 10 weeks, opened on April 16. By turns defiant, impassive and tearful, Mr. Breivik proclaimed that he acted in self-defense, bore no criminal guilt and rejected the authority of the court. He had previously denied criminal responsibility on the ground that he was protecting Norway against Islamic immigration.
In remarkable evidence played to a packed and shocked courtroom, recordings of cellphone calls made by the gunman to the police suggested that he tried twice to give himself up and simply went on killing in the absence of officers to accept his surrender. In the period after the first call to his final shot being fired, prosecutors said, 41 people died. There has been much questioning of why the police took more than an hour to reach the island after the gunman launched the attack.
Depicted as a Loner Obsessed With Computer Games
On the second day of the trial, Mr. Breivik described the deaths as “the most spectacular sophisticated political act in Europe since the Second World War” and said he would do it over again. He rejected an assessment by one psychiatrist that he suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder. “July 22 wasn’t about me. July 22 was a suicide attack. I wasn’t expecting to survive that day,” he said.
On the third and fourth days of the trial, prosecutors pressed Mr. Breivik on his extremist affiliations. He insisted that he belonged to a “cell” within an organization with members across Europe. He sweated and equivocated through skeptical prosecutors’ questioning about his trips to Liberia and London in 2002, during which he says he met a Serbian war criminal and was a founder of the organization, the Knights Templar. Prosecutors say the group does not exist.
As prosecutors chipped away at the question of what happened on his travels, Mr. Breivik seemed to sense that they were seeking to portray him as a fantasist and a loner. But he refused to explain the trip, saying he did not want to expose other network members.
Prosecutors continued to depict Mr. Breivik as a friendless loser, rather than the founder of a shadowy terrorism group called Knights Templar. Prosecutors said Mr. Breivik spent an entire year playing computer war games in his mother’s home. Mr. Breivik acknowledged an investment setback in December 2006, after which he moved into his mother’s Oslo house and spent the next year playing the game “World of Warcraft” for 16 hours a day.
Mr. Breivik also said he spent four months through February 2010 playing another game, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare,” for six hours a day. That game, he said, helped him hone his shooting skills because he was able to practice with the aid of its holographic sight. During questioning about the holographic sight, a prosecutor questioned why Mr. Breivik was smiling. “I know where you are trying to lead me,” Mr. Breivik said. “It is very obvious. You are trying to humiliate me.”
Fearful of Multiculturalism
To the consternation of many Norwegians, Mr. Breivik appears to have achieved at least one of his stated aims — a highly visible platform, with the eyes of the world upon him.
The terror charges carry a maximum penalty of 21 years in prison, but sentences can be prolonged indefinitely for inmates deemed to pose a danger to Norwegian society. Similar rules apply in psychiatric care.
Mr. Breivik’s lawyer has proposed calling witnesses from extreme ends of the political spectrum to demonstrate that Mr. Breivik’s fears of Muslim colonization were not fantasies.
The authorities have described Mr. Breivik as a fundamentalist Christian, a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threat of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration to the cultural and patriotic values of his country.
Mr. Breivik’s lawyer, Geir Lippestad, has described him as a “very cold” person who lived in his own world, buttressed by drugs and the belief that he was a warrior doomed to die for a cause that others did not comprehend. He said that his client called the killings “atrocious,’' but “necessary.”
A Well-Organized Attack
One thing is certain: the killings pointed to a meticulous and well-organized attack on Norway’s current and future political elite. Police said that after Mr. Breivik exploded a car bomb outside government offices in downtown Oslo, he then traveled to Utoya Island, a wooded retreat sponsored by Norway’s Liberal Party, located about 19 miles northwest of Oslo. He came to the camp, which is accessible only by boat, dressed as a police officer. Once there, he said he had come to check on the security of the young political campers. He then gathered them together and proceeded, coldly, to shoot them and then hunt down those who fled.
As soon as the shooting started, witnesses said, people panicked, running in all directions, tumbling down the island’s rocky hill in an attempt to reach the sea. Even after many made it into the water, Mr. Breivik calmly and methodically shot at those who were swimming.
He was equipped, the police said, with an automatic rifle and a handgun; when the police finally got to the island, about 40 minutes after the shooting started, Mr. Breivik surrendered when they called out to him, dropping his weapons. The police said that they had difficulty reaching the island, which delayed their response.
Norway’s prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, had been scheduled to speak to the campers; a former leader of Labor’s youth wing, he had attended the camp every summer since 1974.
Breivik’s Writings
A Facebook page and a Twitter account set up under his name days before the rampage suggest a conscious effort to construct a public persona and leave a legacy for others. Mr. Breivik cited philosophers like Machiavelli, Kant and John Stuart Mill. Although there did not appear to be calls for violence in his Internet postings, he hinted at his will to act in his lone Twitter post, paraphrasing Mill: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.”
In a 1,500-page manifesto, posted on the Web hours before the attacks, Mr. Breivik recorded a day-by-day diary of months of planning for the attacks, and claimed to be part of a small group that intended to “seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.”
He predicted a conflagration that would kill or injure more than a million people, adding, “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come.”
Mr. Breivik’s manifesto spells out plans for using anthrax as part of his war to defend Europe against what he called the rising threat of Muslim domination. But experts in biological weapons said the manifesto showed no evidence that he had actually obtained the lethal germ or could wield it as a weapon. They said the document — at least on the subject of germ attacks — evoked the air of an armchair theorist rather than someone poised to commit mass slaughter.
The manifesto was signed Andrew Berwick, an Anglicized version of his name. A former American government official briefed on the case said investigators believed the manifesto was Mr. Breivik’s work.
The manifesto, entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” equates liberalism and multiculturalism with “cultural Marxism,” which the document says is destroying European Christian civilization.
The document also describes a secret meeting in London in April 2002 to reconstitute the Knights Templar, a Crusader military order. It says the meeting was attended by nine representatives of eight European countries, evidently including Mr. Breivik, with an additional three members unable to attend, including a “European-American.”
Background
Norwegian analysts said that the country’s right-wing groups were very small, having shrunk considerably since the 1990s, and had been quiet. Even the Progress Party, which began as an anti-tax protest and has been stridently anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim in the past, has moved more to the center, to the point that it is seen as a potential coalition partner for the Conservative Party in the 2013 general election.
When Mr. Breivik was not plotting mass murder and fine-tuning the bomb he detonated here, he was busy playing video games and blogging, listening to Euro pop and watching episodes of “True Blood” — except on Sunday nights, when he usually dined with his mother.
It was a parallel life he maintained meticulously in recent years. Former classmates and colleagues described him as unremarkable and easy to forget, qualities, perhaps inborn, that he cultivated — consciously, he would say — to mask his dedication to what he called his “martyrdom operation.”
For years, Mr. Breivik participated in debates in Internet forums on the dangers of Islam and immigration. It is not clear at what point he decided that violence was the solution to the ills he believed were tearing European civilization asunder. Before the attacks that he has admitted mounting on government buildings and a children’s summer camp, he was careful never to telegraph his intentions.
It was about a decade ago that Mr. Breivik started to change. Once a schoolboy who was fond of hip-hop and had a Muslim best friend, in his 20s he began to view the immigrants who flowed freely into Norway and elsewhere in Europe as enemies, and those who sought to accommodate them as traitors, worthy only of execution.
Early in life, Mr. Breivik, far from being a radical, appeared to be on a track to join Norway’s political establishment. He grew up in Skoyen, a middle-class district of western Oslo. His father, a civil servant, and mother, a nurse, divorced when he was 1. Beyond that, his childhood seems to have been uneventful; Mr. Breivik said in his manifesto that it was happy.
He attended the elite high school where the country’s current king, Harald V, and his son once studied. Former classmates remembered him as quiet but intelligent, with a small rebellious streak: he was a prolific graffiti artist.
Toward the end of high school, he joined the youth wing of the Progress Party, drawn to its anti-immigrant platform and market capitalist bent. But those who knew him from those days said that he failed to leave much of a mark.
He began to struggle with life, those who knew him said. He became estranged from his father, who moved to France. Then his sister, Elisabeth, on whom he seemed to rely in his father’s absence, moved to the United States and married an American.
It was a time when, according to his manifesto, his political views began to transmute. He began to perceive what he said was the hostility of Muslim youth. He latched on to reports of attacks against ethnic Norwegian men and rapes of ethnic Norwegian women by immigrant gangs.
Dagbladet, a national newspaper, quoted an unnamed fellow student from Mr. Breivik’s high school days as saying that Mr. Breivik started showing an interest in far-right and neo-Nazi movements around the age of 18, in the late 1990s, and that he was rumored to have worked as a doorman or bouncer at neo-Nazi events. He would later become critical of neo-Nazi groups.
Mr. Breivik wrote that the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 was a tipping point for him, describing the operation meant to halt a genocide as a betrayal of a fellow Christian people for the sake of Muslims.
He spent the next decade slowly working out his plan, though few people, it seems, had any inkling of it.
To earn money for the attacks, he wrote that he had started a company that earned him millions. Neighbors cast doubt on this claim, however, saying that they thought he had inherited some money from relatives.
As he went about gathering six tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and turning aspirin powder into pure acetylsalicylic acid for his bomb, he led an active life online, railing against Muslims and Marxists in debate forums.
The police say he rented a farm in eastern Norway, not far from the capital, and holed up there for several months to prepare his bomb.
When not surfing conservative blogs, Mr. Breivik was fighting virtual demons, ogres and other fantastical creatures in online role-playing games. He was a regular in talk forums for players of “World of Warcraft,” using a busty female as his avatar and the handle Conservatism.
Prosecutors continued to depict Mr. Breivik as a friendless loser, rather than the founder of a shadowy terrorism group called Knights Templar. Prosecutors said Mr. Breivik spent an entire year playing computer war games in his mother’s home. Mr. Breivik acknowledged an investment setback in December 2006, after which he moved into his mother’s Oslo house and spent the next year playing the game “World of Warcraft” for 16 hours a day.
Mr. Breivik also said he spent four months through February 2010 playing another game, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare,” for six hours a day. That game, he said, helped him hone his shooting skills because he was able to practice with the aid of its holographic sight. During questioning about the holographic sight, a prosecutor questioned why Mr. Breivik was smiling. “I know where you are trying to lead me,” Mr. Breivik said. “It is very obvious. You are trying to humiliate me.”
Fearful of Multiculturalism
To the consternation of many Norwegians, Mr. Breivik appears to have achieved at least one of his stated aims — a highly visible platform, with the eyes of the world upon him.
The terror charges carry a maximum penalty of 21 years in prison, but sentences can be prolonged indefinitely for inmates deemed to pose a danger to Norwegian society. Similar rules apply in psychiatric care.
Mr. Breivik’s lawyer has proposed calling witnesses from extreme ends of the political spectrum to demonstrate that Mr. Breivik’s fears of Muslim colonization were not fantasies.
The authorities have described Mr. Breivik as a fundamentalist Christian, a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threat of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration to the cultural and patriotic values of his country.
Mr. Breivik’s lawyer, Geir Lippestad, has described him as a “very cold” person who lived in his own world, buttressed by drugs and the belief that he was a warrior doomed to die for a cause that others did not comprehend. He said that his client called the killings “atrocious,’' but “necessary.”
A Well-Organized Attack
One thing is certain: the killings pointed to a meticulous and well-organized attack on Norway’s current and future political elite. Police said that after Mr. Breivik exploded a car bomb outside government offices in downtown Oslo, he then traveled to Utoya Island, a wooded retreat sponsored by Norway’s Liberal Party, located about 19 miles northwest of Oslo. He came to the camp, which is accessible only by boat, dressed as a police officer. Once there, he said he had come to check on the security of the young political campers. He then gathered them together and proceeded, coldly, to shoot them and then hunt down those who fled.
As soon as the shooting started, witnesses said, people panicked, running in all directions, tumbling down the island’s rocky hill in an attempt to reach the sea. Even after many made it into the water, Mr. Breivik calmly and methodically shot at those who were swimming.
He was equipped, the police said, with an automatic rifle and a handgun; when the police finally got to the island, about 40 minutes after the shooting started, Mr. Breivik surrendered when they called out to him, dropping his weapons. The police said that they had difficulty reaching the island, which delayed their response.
Norway’s prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, had been scheduled to speak to the campers; a former leader of Labor’s youth wing, he had attended the camp every summer since 1974.
Breivik’s Writings
A Facebook page and a Twitter account set up under his name days before the rampage suggest a conscious effort to construct a public persona and leave a legacy for others. Mr. Breivik cited philosophers like Machiavelli, Kant and John Stuart Mill. Although there did not appear to be calls for violence in his Internet postings, he hinted at his will to act in his lone Twitter post, paraphrasing Mill: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.”
In a 1,500-page manifesto, posted on the Web hours before the attacks, Mr. Breivik recorded a day-by-day diary of months of planning for the attacks, and claimed to be part of a small group that intended to “seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.”
He predicted a conflagration that would kill or injure more than a million people, adding, “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come.”
Mr. Breivik’s manifesto spells out plans for using anthrax as part of his war to defend Europe against what he called the rising threat of Muslim domination. But experts in biological weapons said the manifesto showed no evidence that he had actually obtained the lethal germ or could wield it as a weapon. They said the document — at least on the subject of germ attacks — evoked the air of an armchair theorist rather than someone poised to commit mass slaughter.
The manifesto was signed Andrew Berwick, an Anglicized version of his name. A former American government official briefed on the case said investigators believed the manifesto was Mr. Breivik’s work.
The manifesto, entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” equates liberalism and multiculturalism with “cultural Marxism,” which the document says is destroying European Christian civilization.
The document also describes a secret meeting in London in April 2002 to reconstitute the Knights Templar, a Crusader military order. It says the meeting was attended by nine representatives of eight European countries, evidently including Mr. Breivik, with an additional three members unable to attend, including a “European-American.”
Background
Norwegian analysts said that the country’s right-wing groups were very small, having shrunk considerably since the 1990s, and had been quiet. Even the Progress Party, which began as an anti-tax protest and has been stridently anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim in the past, has moved more to the center, to the point that it is seen as a potential coalition partner for the Conservative Party in the 2013 general election.
When Mr. Breivik was not plotting mass murder and fine-tuning the bomb he detonated here, he was busy playing video games and blogging, listening to Euro pop and watching episodes of “True Blood” — except on Sunday nights, when he usually dined with his mother.
It was a parallel life he maintained meticulously in recent years. Former classmates and colleagues described him as unremarkable and easy to forget, qualities, perhaps inborn, that he cultivated — consciously, he would say — to mask his dedication to what he called his “martyrdom operation.”
For years, Mr. Breivik participated in debates in Internet forums on the dangers of Islam and immigration. It is not clear at what point he decided that violence was the solution to the ills he believed were tearing European civilization asunder. Before the attacks that he has admitted mounting on government buildings and a children’s summer camp, he was careful never to telegraph his intentions.
It was about a decade ago that Mr. Breivik started to change. Once a schoolboy who was fond of hip-hop and had a Muslim best friend, in his 20s he began to view the immigrants who flowed freely into Norway and elsewhere in Europe as enemies, and those who sought to accommodate them as traitors, worthy only of execution.
Early in life, Mr. Breivik, far from being a radical, appeared to be on a track to join Norway’s political establishment. He grew up in Skoyen, a middle-class district of western Oslo. His father, a civil servant, and mother, a nurse, divorced when he was 1. Beyond that, his childhood seems to have been uneventful; Mr. Breivik said in his manifesto that it was happy.
He attended the elite high school where the country’s current king, Harald V, and his son once studied. Former classmates remembered him as quiet but intelligent, with a small rebellious streak: he was a prolific graffiti artist.
Toward the end of high school, he joined the youth wing of the Progress Party, drawn to its anti-immigrant platform and market capitalist bent. But those who knew him from those days said that he failed to leave much of a mark.
He began to struggle with life, those who knew him said. He became estranged from his father, who moved to France. Then his sister, Elisabeth, on whom he seemed to rely in his father’s absence, moved to the United States and married an American.
It was a time when, according to his manifesto, his political views began to transmute. He began to perceive what he said was the hostility of Muslim youth. He latched on to reports of attacks against ethnic Norwegian men and rapes of ethnic Norwegian women by immigrant gangs.
Dagbladet, a national newspaper, quoted an unnamed fellow student from Mr. Breivik’s high school days as saying that Mr. Breivik started showing an interest in far-right and neo-Nazi movements around the age of 18, in the late 1990s, and that he was rumored to have worked as a doorman or bouncer at neo-Nazi events. He would later become critical of neo-Nazi groups.
Mr. Breivik wrote that the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 was a tipping point for him, describing the operation meant to halt a genocide as a betrayal of a fellow Christian people for the sake of Muslims.
He spent the next decade slowly working out his plan, though few people, it seems, had any inkling of it.
To earn money for the attacks, he wrote that he had started a company that earned him millions. Neighbors cast doubt on this claim, however, saying that they thought he had inherited some money from relatives.
As he went about gathering six tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and turning aspirin powder into pure acetylsalicylic acid for his bomb, he led an active life online, railing against Muslims and Marxists in debate forums.
The police say he rented a farm in eastern Norway, not far from the capital, and holed up there for several months to prepare his bomb.
When not surfing conservative blogs, Mr. Breivik was fighting virtual demons, ogres and other fantastical creatures in online role-playing games. He was a regular in talk forums for players of “World of Warcraft,” using a busty female as his avatar and the handle Conservatism.
ARTICLES ABOUT ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK
Newest First | Oldest First
Norway: Anders Breivik Studied Al Qaeda
Anders Breivik, who has confessed to killing 77 people last year, said that before carrying out his bombing-and-shooting rampage, he studied attacks by Al Qaeda and other terrorists.
April 20, 2012Breivik Says He Wishes Norway Death Toll Had Been Higher
Anders Behring Breivik told prosecutors in court that his massacre last summer was justified, and that he had planned to behead a former prime minister.
April 19, 2012Prosecutors Press Anders Behring Breivik on Extremist Affiliations
Anders Behring Breivik was questioned about trips to Liberia and London during which he said he met a Serbian war criminal and founded his anti-Islamic militant group.
April 18, 2012British Ultranationalist Warns of Shariah's 'Creeping' Influence, and Twitter Laughs
A Twitter thread was soon filled with mockery of its premise of a stealth campaign by Muslims to replace Western values with a version of Islamic law.
April 17, 2012MORE ON ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK AND: Muslims and Islam, Shariah (Islamic Law), Europe, Breivik, Anders Behring
On Witness Stand in Norway, Breivik Says He’d Kill Again
Demanding his acquittal, Anders Behring Breivik took the stand for the first time, describing his killing of 77 people last year as a “sophisticated political act.”
April 17, 2012MORE ON ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK AND: MURDERS AND ATTEMPTED MURDERS, NORWAY
Video of Anders Behring Breivik in Court
Television coverage of the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, the gunman who has admitted that he killed 77 people during twin attacks in Norway last year, showed him smiling, crying and raising his fist in a salute.
April 16, 2012MORE ON ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK AND: Murders and Attempted Murders, Terrorism, Norway, Oslo (Norway), Utoya (Norway), Breivik, Anders Behring
Raised-Fist Salute Has Varied Meanings
Anders Behring Breivik, the anti-Muslim militant who admitted to killing 77 people in a bombing and shooting spree last year, began his first day of trial with a disturbing, rod-straight salute of the arm, his fist closed tightly.
April 16, 2012MORE ON ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK AND: Fringe Groups and Movements, Politics and Government, Norway, Breivik, Anders Behring
Breivik Claims Self-Defense in Norway Killings
Anders Behring Breivik, accused of killing 77 people at a camp last summer, was defiant and impassive as his trial opened in the July 2011 killings.
April 16, 2012MORE ON ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK AND: MURDERS AND ATTEMPTED MURDERS, FRINGE GROUPS AND MOVEMENTS, MUSLIMS AND ISLAM, NORWAY
Anders Breivik
The Norwegian anti-Islamic militant will face a maximum sentence of 21 years. That's nothing, by American standards.
April 16, 2012MORE ON ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK AND: Prisons and Prisoners, Sentences (Criminal), Breivik, Anders Behring
Norway: Mass Killer Found to Be Sane
A new psychiatric evaluation of Anders Behring Breivik, who confessed to killing 77 people in Norway last year, concluded Tuesday that he was not psychotic when he carried out the attacks.
April 11, 2012MORE ON ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK AND: MURDERS AND ATTEMPTED MURDERS, MENTAL HEALTH AND DISORDERS, UTOYA (NORWAY), NORWAY
Norway: Man Is Charged in Rampage
Anders Behring Breivik was indicted Wednesday on terrorism and murder charges related to the killings of 77 people last July, but prosecutors said he would probably not go to prison.
March 8, 2012Norway: Killer of 77 Was Insane During Rampage, Prosecution Says
The confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik belongs in psychiatric care instead of prison, prosecutors in Norway said Tuesday.
November 30, 2011MORE ON ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK AND: PRISONS AND PRISONERS, MURDERS AND ATTEMPTED MURDERS, MENTAL HEALTH AND DISORDERS, NORWAY
Norway: Accused Oslo Gunman Appears in Court
Anders Behring Breivik, an avowed anti-immigrant extremist who has admitted to killing 77 people in a rampage in Norway last summer, appeared at his first public court hearing on Monday.
November 15, 2011King Harald of Norway Proves Mettle With Response to July 22 Deaths
July 22, when 77 people were killed by a homegrown terrorist in Norway, was King Harald V’s test. He is considered to have passed it.
October 16, 2011Poland: 19 Are Arrested in Sweep Tied to Inquiry on Norway Attacks
A Polish security agency said Wednesday that 19 people had been arrested on suspicion of producing and possessing explosives as part of a wider investigation into people with links to Anders Behring Breivik.
October 13, 2011MORE ON ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK AND: BOMBS AND EXPLOSIVES, NORWAY
Norway - Anders Breivik Studied Al Qaeda - NYTimes.com
Norway - Anders Breivik Studied Al Qaeda - NYTimes.com
World Briefing | Europe
Norway: Militant Studied Al Qaeda
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 20, 2012
On the fifth day of his trial to determine whether he is sane or insane, Anders Behring Breivik, who has confessed to killing 77 people last year, said that before carrying out his bombing-and-shooting rampage, he studied attacks by Al Qaeda and Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, as well as the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. He also said he had read more than 600 bomb-making guides. He called Al Qaeda “the most successful revolutionary movement in the world” and said it should serve as an inspiration to far-right militants, though their goals differ. Later, he described in graphic detail hunting down and killing teenagers at a summer camp. He has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges, saying his victims had betrayed Norway by embracing immigration.
Future of psychiatry explored in new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine - Office of Communications & Public Affairs - Stanford University School of Medicine
Future of psychiatry explored in new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine - Office of Communications & Public Affairs - Stanford University School of Medicine
APRIL 19, 2012
Psychiatry needs to “hug the sciences,” says the chair of the school’s psychiatry department, Laura Roberts, MD, in the new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine.
The lead story in the report, “Inside the head: The future of psychiatry,” describes efforts to end the historic split between psychiatry’s two camps — those favoring psychotherapy and those favoring biological treatments.
Roberts believes that advances in genetics and neuroimaging are already bridging the gulf. “That’s the key to the future, that’s where we discover new ways of understanding neuropsychiatric disease as well as its prevention and optimal treatment,” she said in the lead story. But by treatments, she doesn’t just mean medications. “I can’t imagine a future where psychiatry does not also involve therapy.”
The need to improve psychiatric treatment is urgent. The major methods — psychotherapy and drugs — aren’t working for many people who suffer from mental illness. While psychotherapy is considered the most effective treatment for many conditions, it’s all too common that patients can’t afford it or don’t want to do it. Drugs are often not the answer either, as many patients don’t respond or find the side effects too painful. Furthermore, few new drugs are in the pipeline.
The recent explosion of insights coming from the field of neuroscience is only barely beginning to influence the research and practice of psychiatry — which is not surprising, since neuroscience is not a required subject for most psychiatry trainees. That needs to change, according to leaders such as Roberts, who has helped to launch a course in neuroscience for psychiatry residents, and is introducing additional training for subspecialties such as forensic psychiatry and addiction medicine.
Inside the report:
This issue’s “Plus” section, featuring stories unrelated to the special report, includes:
The magazine, including Web-only features, is available online at http://stanmed.stanford.edu. Print copies are being sent to subscribers. Others can request a copy at (650) 736-0297 or medmag@stanford.edu.
Stanford Medicine is published three times a year by the medical school’s Office of Communication & Public Affairs. Follow @stanmedmag on Twitter.
APRIL 19, 2012
0 0
0 Future of psychiatry explored in new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine
BY ROSANNE SPECTOR
Sculpture: Frederico Raya/Photo: Victor Villafuerte
Psychiatry needs to “hug the sciences,” says the chair of the school’s psychiatry department, Laura Roberts, MD, in the new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine.
The lead story in the report, “Inside the head: The future of psychiatry,” describes efforts to end the historic split between psychiatry’s two camps — those favoring psychotherapy and those favoring biological treatments.
Roberts believes that advances in genetics and neuroimaging are already bridging the gulf. “That’s the key to the future, that’s where we discover new ways of understanding neuropsychiatric disease as well as its prevention and optimal treatment,” she said in the lead story. But by treatments, she doesn’t just mean medications. “I can’t imagine a future where psychiatry does not also involve therapy.”
The need to improve psychiatric treatment is urgent. The major methods — psychotherapy and drugs — aren’t working for many people who suffer from mental illness. While psychotherapy is considered the most effective treatment for many conditions, it’s all too common that patients can’t afford it or don’t want to do it. Drugs are often not the answer either, as many patients don’t respond or find the side effects too painful. Furthermore, few new drugs are in the pipeline.
Related News
The recent explosion of insights coming from the field of neuroscience is only barely beginning to influence the research and practice of psychiatry — which is not surprising, since neuroscience is not a required subject for most psychiatry trainees. That needs to change, according to leaders such as Roberts, who has helped to launch a course in neuroscience for psychiatry residents, and is introducing additional training for subspecialties such as forensic psychiatry and addiction medicine.
Inside the report:
- The lead article on psychiatry’s tentative embrace of biology, with a particular focus on neuroimaging.
- A Q&A with writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, MD, on the brain’s amazing recuperative powers.
- A feature on physical treatments for depression, including transcranial magnetic stimulation and deep brain stimulation.
- A look at the neuroscience of addiction.
- A story about giving parents of children with autism the scientific skills to study what therapies and treatments work best for their children.
This issue’s “Plus” section, featuring stories unrelated to the special report, includes:
- An article on the effort to finally figure out what happens inside a brain during a concussion
- A story about what happens when a Stanford professor with a man’s body decides to become a woman, and what this tells us about the health challenges for transgender people.
The magazine, including Web-only features, is available online at http://stanmed.stanford.edu. Print copies are being sent to subscribers. Others can request a copy at (650) 736-0297 or medmag@stanford.edu.
Stanford Medicine is published three times a year by the medical school’s Office of Communication & Public Affairs. Follow @stanmedmag on Twitter.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Mike Nova: What makes Breivik's thinking and concepts abnormal and delusional?
Mike Nova: What makes Breivik's thinking and concepts abnormal and delusional?
Although arising from "legitimate" and relatively common concerns about the vicissitudes of "multiculturalism", Breivic's thinking, appearing formally logical and internally consistent, is taken to its socially and mentally illogical and abnormal ( markedly at odds with conventional norms and values of contemporary Norwegian society) and psychopathological (existing as a part of a recognisable clinical diagnostic pattern of Delusional Disorder and combined with a sense of "extraordinary and important" mission) extreme: overt behavior and horrendous criminal action, which due to their oddity and single minded obsessive conviction, confirm their delusional nature. At the times of "Knights Templar" in 13 century Europe his behavior and actions might not necessarily had been considered abnormal (the concept of "abnormal behavior" was not formed very well yet at that time). In cultures which are more tolerant of "righteous violence" and religious extremism his behavior would be probably viewed less in terms of mutually exclusive dichotomies of "normal vs abnormal" and more in terms of "goal justifying the means". In today's Norway his behavior is considered by many experts and non experts as being "abnormal" and "pathological". Psychopathology and sociopathology are always "culture bound". However, these issues, if they are to contain at least some elements of "scientific knowledge, truth and objectivity" (which are also always culture and time bound), cannot be decided by non experts or popular vote. The court, observing and assessing the defendant independently, will have to rely on the experts opinions (their contradictory and conflicting reports notwithstanding) and the state of current knowledge in the field of forensic psychiatry, whatever imperfect or scientifically unsatisfactory this state of knowledge might be.
Anders Behring Breivik trial, day five - Mike Nova's starred items - 7:14 AM 4/20/2012
Anders Behring Breivik trial, day five - Mike Nova's starred items - 7:14 AM 4/20/2012
Google Reader - Mike Nova's starred items
Mike Nova's starred items
via anders behring breivik - Google News on 4/20/12
 The Guardian | Anders Behring Breivik trial, day five - live updates The Guardian Welcome to live coverage of day five of the trial of Anders Behring Breivik. TV cameras continue to be barred from proceedings during Breivik's testimony, to avoid giving him a direct platform for his views, but we'll bring you updates from the ... Norway killer sharpened aim on computer gamesBoston.com Chronicle of a trial foretold: Breivik is following his manifesto's scriptChristian Science Monitor Norway killer says he drilled with video gamePhiladelphia Inquirer CNN -The Australian all 2,634 news articles » |
via The Guardian World News by Haroon Siddique, Helen Pidd on 4/20/12
• Denies any contact with English Defence League
• Says bomb 'failure' prompted him to go to Utøya
12.08pm: The court is back in session and Breivik is asked what he did to avoid the need for violence. He responds "everything"; violence was the last resort, he claims.
Breivik: violence was last resort: previously tried "everything that was possible through peaceful means until I lost my faith in democracy"
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
"Everything" means "normal involvement through political parties, writing essays, communicating or writing comments on the internet"11.56am: The afternoon session is due to begin at 12pm BST.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Helen Pidd, in Oslo, has filed a news story on this morning's proceedings. I'll post the link when it's up on the Guardian website but in the meantime here's an extract:
Anders Behring Breivik has denied having contact with the English Defence League (EDL), the anti-Islamist network formed in Britain in 2009.11.10am: I mentioned earlier that Norwegian papers have not put Breivik on their front pages today (see 8.05am). Here is an interesting front page from today's Morgenbladet (a Norwegian weekly). It shows a picture of Breivik but his face has been removed and replaced by the words "Se på meg" (Look at me). (Thanks to Eivind Krohg @Krohg on Twitter for sending through the link).
Giving evidence in the fifth day of his ten-week trial for killing 77 people in Norway last year, the 33-year-old admitted he had posted on internet forums "linked to the EDL" and had traded messages with an EDL member on one such website. But he insisted: "I have never had contact with the English Defence League."
He told the court that the EDL was fundamentally different from the Knights Templar (KT), the anti-immigration network of "militant nationalists" to which he professes to belong. He said: "The EDL is an anti-violent organisation supporting democracy ...and they have nothing to do with KT at all. You cannot even compare them."
Questioned by his own lawyers as to how he was able to carry out the attacks which killed 77 in Norway last summer, Breivik described a "meditation" technique he had developed which mixed "Christian prayer" and Japanese "Bushido warrior codex" practised by Samurai fighters.
He insisted on Friday he was a "nice person" who was capable of empathising with those whose lives he had ruined, but that he had chosen not to as a self-preservation technique. "In many ways it is a protection mechanism," he said. "First of all, if you are going to be capable of executing such a bloody and horrendous operation you need to work on your mind, your psyche for years. We have seen from military traditions you cannot send an unprepared person into war."
Skal vi bare være enige om at Morgenbladet vant i dag? twitter.com/MoHanssen/stat…11.02am: The court has adjourned for lunch for one hour.
— Anders Mo Hanssen (@MoHanssen) April 20, 2012
10.55am: The accused outlines the Norwegian culture he wants to "protect", citing even door handles.
Breivik asked to describe Norwegian culture he wants to protect: "It's everything in Norway ranging from door handles, patterns, beer..."
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
"...The way we speak, act... school disciple, politeness, the way we address each other." (Breivik's idea of what is Norwegian culture)10.52am: Breivik has already described women as lacking comprehension and "backbone" and crticised the culture he says is turning boys into girls. Now he challenges the knowledge of a female lawyer.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik does not seem to respect women - challenges female lawyer who mentions Masonic philosophy. "How do you know? It's reserved for men."10.42am: Breivik says he has never had contact with the English Defence League.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
10.31am: Breivik insists that he is sane.
Breivik: "This case is very simple. I'm not a psychiatric case and I am sane."
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
I am of sound mind, says #Breivik. Understand people think this is madness. Important to se difference political extremism and madness.10.26am: The accused is now being asked by the lawyers for the bereaved/victims about his capacity for empathy and says he chooses not to feel it because he would break down if forced to truly confront the suffering he has inflicted.
— Trygve Sorvaag (@TrygveSorvaag) April 20, 2012
Breivik says he is choosing not to show empathy b/c "I think I would break down mentally if I removed the mental shields that I have built".
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik says men should not show emotions - "in western europe men have become feminised" - unlike the Japanese men whom he admires.10.22am: Breivik says that he partied a lot from 2010 to 2011. Earlier, in the trial he was keen to reject perceptions of himself as a loner, saying he had lots of friends but stopped seeing them to concentrate on his "operation". But today he says he partied "until the end".
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik says he partied "at least once a month" from 2010 to 2011, right "until the end". Went clubbing, drinking.10.18am: The accused is asked about his relationship with his family and says it is good.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik: "I've always had a good relationship to my mother, I guess i've had a good relationship with all of my family."
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik says he wd urge his retired mother to get a hobby, but she would say to him, "you're my hobby". They ate together, talked once a day
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
#Breivik: step-father lives in Thailand. Sent him an SMS message a year ago, but didn't hear back.
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
#Breivik: sister lives in Los Angeles, spoke one a month, and because couldn't tell her real intent, she believed him a games addict.10.15am: Breivik is talking about the day of the attack and how it was only the bomb's "failure" (it killed eight people but the accused said yesterday that he wanted to slay a minimum of 12 and for the government building to collapse) that made him take the decision to go to Utøya.
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
#Breivik: talking about day of bombing. "I was in fight or flight mode. When I saw car parked in space I wanted, I ust had to adapt."
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
#Breivik: says there were gasses coming off device as he prepared to light fuse. Says he expected it to explode and kill him/
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
#Breivik: "Starting point was not to kill as many as possible, but to send a message and ensure the compendium was distributed."
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
#Breivik: "If the building had collapsed, Utoya would have been unnecessary, and I could have driven straight to the police station...
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
#Breivik: "...and surrendered."
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
#Breivik: says when he heard on radio the bomb attack had "failed", it was then he decided to travel to Utoya.10.03am: Breivik is asked about how he gained his bomb-making expertise without being discovered.
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
Breivik says he was forced to operate as a 1-man cell b/c the Norwegian secret service know too much. "Unfortunately for us, good for them."
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik ordered explosive fuses in Dec so he could pretend he needed them for New Years Eve fireworks and when postal service most busy.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
#Breivik says he masked his IP address to make himself anonymous on the internet, to prevent himself being flagged by intel services.9.59am: After lauding al-Qaida for its members' willingness to "embrace" martyrdom, Breveik reveals how he overcame his own fear of death. His reference to samurai fits with his own perception of himself as some kind of heroic warrior.
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
Breivik says he combated fear of death through Christian prayer and the Japanese Bushido "warrior codex" used by samurai fighters.9.54am: Proceedings are underway once more, with Breivik being questioned by his defence counsel about al-Qaida, who the accused has referred to as "methodological role models" during the trial.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
#Breivik says AQ was created *after* 9/11
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
#Breivik says he studied the weaknesses and strengths of many groups: FARC, IRA and others, and concluded the most successful was AQ
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
#Breivik: "most successful (revolutionary org) in the world today is Al Qaeda forlinking martyrdom to their operations, they embrace death9.50am: Helen Pidd, in court in Oslo, has sent through this summary of today's opening session:
— Steve Rosenberg (@stvbrg) April 20, 2012
9.31am: The court has adjourned for a 20-minute break.
The Breivik who is giving evidence today on the fifth day of his ten-week trial is probably the most confident and fluent we have seen him all week. Whether or not he is "criminally insane" in the eyes of the court, there is no doubt that he planned every aspect of his attacks in cold, clinical detail - and he seems to be enjoying demonstrating the extent of his preparations and knowledge
Nothing was left to chance. He has told the court today how he carried out test blasts 2km from his farm during a thunder storm so as not to arouse suspicion; how he learned an unusual bomb making technique from Andreas Baader from the Red Army Action. Yesterday we heard how he made a sign to put in the window of the hire car where he planted the bomb warning of "sewage works" to explain the sulphuric smell. He also says he consulted 600 different bomb making manuals on the internet but in the end concocted his own "recipe".
Earlier in the week, Breivik was evasive and truculent in the witness box, refusing to answer more than 150 questions related to the Knights Templar anti-Islamic network he claims to be a part of. The prosecution do not believe such a group exists and say that Breivik was alone terrorist, an assertion Breivik repeatedly denies. But today, admitting he alone worked out how to build a deadly bomb, he is animated, eloquent, giving expansive answers to questions put to him by his defence team.
We know already that the 33-year-old is rather sensitive about being ahigh school drop-out - he has repeatedly stressed that though he does not have a school leaving certificate, he has carried out "15,000"hours of independent study. Today he is revelling in the opportunity to show just how much knowledge he had learned about explosives in order to carry out the Oslo bomb attack which left eight dead and dozens more seriously injured.
During the recess, it is well worth reading this online Q&A with a survivor of the Utøya massacre on Reddit. It is fascinating reading, terrifying, tragic and moving but also heartwarming in the survivor's response to being caught up in such an unimaginable atrocity.
It begins:
I am a 17-years-old, and a Utøya survivor. I was at the closest 20m away from Anders Behring Breivik. After the shooting started I was on the island for two hours and could have died approximately six times in those two hours. I'm not doing so bad, I have good days and bad days but I'm alive. I just wanted to get things off my chest ...I just wanted people to know that what ever happens, there is always a way to get through though things! And I hope everyone is doing well! : )And here are a couple of the answers given:
9.14am: After repeating his assertion yesterday that the bomb was less effective than he had hoped (he says 30% less effective) because his intended parking spot was taken, Breivik is now being asked by his defence counsel about Utøya.
Q How has your life changed since the incident? Do you consider yourself a different person because of this experience?
A Of course did it changed me, I've become a stronger human being. It has also made me more confident and more prescient when it comes to believing in what you stand for. I am not a person who is easily knocked down.
Q This may be a bit personal, but if you had the opportunity to confront Breivik is there anything you wish you could tell him? Also, thank you to you and your fellow Norwegians for the civil way everyone has responded. It's an attitude I wish more people in my country would emulate.
A That I get why he did it, but that I think that going after children, I consider myself still a child, it's way beyond every other choice he could have chosen to prove his point.
Breivik carried out a "reconnaissance mission" to Utøya to check out the ferry; also checked Labour party youth website for camp programme.9.05am: Helen Pidd, in the courtroom, says Breivik seems to relish discussing construction of the bomb.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik is most fluent & happy when talking about how he planned the 22 July bomb - eloquent, animated, intelligent. Attention to detail.8.59am: Breivik continues to talk about how he created the bomb, saying he did not follow instructions to the letter but experimented after studying chemistry.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik says he studied chemistry on the internet from autumn 2010 in order to carry out bomb making experiments.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik said he didn't follow a "specific recipe" for the fertiliser bomb which killed 8 in Oslo on 22 July, but "experimented" himself.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik says he was influenced in a particular bomb making technique by Andreas Baader from the Red Army Faction/Baader Meinhof Gang.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik says he relied on Google Translate a lot in order to gain his bomb making/chemistry knowledge.8.51am: The defence moves on to ask Breivik about his detailed knowledge of bomb-making, which was evident in court yesterday when he described the manufacture of the device that killed eight people in the government quarter on 22 July (at one point there was discussion in court about whether he was going in to too much detail).
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik on how bombmaking: "On the internet I did research and I gained access to more than 600 guides of how to produce explosives."8.45am: Breivik's defence counsel Geir Lippestad is now questioning the accused.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik says that Japan and South Korea are the "ideal states" for cultural conservatives and nationalists such as himself.8.39am: Breivik is asked whether he can feel sadness.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik: "Under normal circumstances I am a very nice person." Says he cried more than anyone else as his best friend's brothers funeral.8.38am: The accused is being asked about his detached manner yesterday, when he told the court that he wanted everyone on Utøya to die and that he planned to behead former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, posting the footage on the internet.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
He says he is a "nice person" according to some but that he trained himself as soldiers are trained for warfare.
#Breivik: "Many people will describe me as a nice person, a sympathetic person, who is very caring to close people and friends..."
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
#Breivik: ...but in order to be capable of attacking someone, you have to legitimise this to yourself."
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
BREIVIK:""if you are going to be capable of executing such a bloody &horrendous operation you need to work on your mind, your psyche4 years"
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik: "People say 'he must be a monster, he cannot be from this planet, he must have no emotions and empathy left..."
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik:"...but this has to do with preparing and training." Compares his "dehumanisation" technique to way soldiers are trained for warfare
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik said he was "quite normal" until starting his "de-emotionalisation" training in 2006.8.23am: Breivik talks about the difficulty of getting his views aired in the Norwegian media.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik complains that "cultural conservatives" such as himself has no chance of having a letter published in a Norwegian newspaper.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik: "if you want to publish a books that is criticising the state ideology... you need to use dissident publishing houses."
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik says he has twice complained to Norway's state broadcasters in 2009 that they were ignoring "Muslim right in France and Gothenburg"8.21am: Breivik also criticises cultural marxists, accusing them of turning boys into girls.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik says cultural marxists have subverted traditional gender models - "suddenly boys are supposed to start knitting &doing crochet"Earlier in the trial, he suggested that most women don't have the comprehension or "backbone" to be a "revolutionary activist" like himself.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
8.18am: Now the accused is lining up an array of targets to blame for "anti-European racism". Many of them he has mentioned before in court - journalists, authorities, schools - but he also mentions writers of children's songs.
#Breivik: "100%. All media in Norway. In Europe. Belong to multiculturalism. And all want to defend the multicultural experiment."
— Paul Brennan (@paulrbrennan) April 20, 2012
#Breivik Why do authorities tolerate muslim youth attack/harass/abuse/rape Norwegian youth? Why can Norwegians not defend themselves?
— Matthew Price (@matthewwprice) April 20, 2012
#Breivik criticize children song writers and educational system for indoctrinating children.8.14am: Breivik is insisting he is not a racist and seems to be employing the defence often employed by racists who do not want to admit the fact - that he has had "minority" friends.
— Trygve Sorvaag (@TrygveSorvaag) April 20, 2012
Breivk on his youth: "I have known many from minority circles, I have had many good friends."
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik: "I am not a racist, I am an anti-racist." Concerned with the "anti-European racism" in the Norwegian media.8.09am: Proceedings have begun with the prosecution trying to establish Breivik's capability to experience empathy.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik says he has chosen to use "technical" language to "de-emotionalise" himself to talk about his "gruesome, barbaric acts".
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Breivik on his conscious "distancing": "If I tried to use a more normal language I don't think I would be able to talk about this at all."8.05am: Interestingly, Norwegian newspapers did not put Breivik on the front page of today's editions, journalists report.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) April 20, 2012
Norwegian newspapers have today removed #Breivik from their front pages. twitter.com/TrygveSorvaag/…
— Trygve Sorvaag (@TrygveSorvaag) April 20, 2012
Interesting decision by main #Norway papers to take #Breivik off front page. Yesterday's evidence in pure news terms was strongest yet.7.59am: Good morning. Welcome to live coverage of day five of the trial of Anders Behring Breivik.
— Matthew Price (@matthewwprice) April 20, 2012
TV cameras continue to be barred from proceedings during Breivik's testimony, to avoid giving him a direct platform for his views, but we'll bring you updates from the journalists inside the court including the Guardian's Helen Pidd.
Yesterday's proceedings were the most disturbing so far as the accused told the court that his "primary target" in last year's terrorist attacks was former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, whom he planned to behead, posting the footage on the internet – and that he anticipated all 564 people on Utøya would die in his "operation".
You can read yesterday's blog here.
And here is a link to the news story covering yesterday's proceedings.
Breivik's defence team have warned survivors and beraeaved relatives that today is likely to be difficult for them as focus will be on the killing spree on Utøya.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
via Google News on 4/20/12
Breivik studied terror on internet The Press Association Anders Behring Breivik acquired the knowledge to carry out a bomb and shooting rampage on the internet, he told a Norwegian court. He said he examined case studies of al Qaida and other attacks and read more than 600 bomb-making guides. and more » |
via anders behring breivik - Google News on 4/18/12
Who are the Knights Templar? A look at many groups Boston.com April 18, 2012|AP Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has claimed allegiance to the Knights Templar, which he described as a secret society created to carry out a crusade against Islam in Europe. Several unrelated organizations claim the name ... and more » |
via Google News on 4/19/12
Templars and Terror: Anders Breivik's Fantasy World Huffington Post Anders Breivik's trial for mass murder has begun in Norway. He has pled not guilty. Proud of committing a massacre at a youth camp, he sees himself as a soldier at war. More accurately, he is a general -- a Justiciar Knight in the Knights Templar -- a ... and more » |
via anders behring breivik - Google Blog Search by Attaturk on 4/19/12
Anders Behring Breivik Approved. It is not a good week for the image of Scandinavian tolerance. I present to you the most tone-deaf and inappropriate political moment of 2012, international edition. Oh.My.Gawd. posted by ...
via anders behring breivik - Google Blog Search by The Huffington Post News Editors on 4/19/12
OSLO, Norway — Anders Behring Breivik knew it would take practice to be able to slaughter dozens of people before being shot by police. In a chilling account, the far-right fanatic claimed Thursday that he sharpened his aim ...
via anders behring breivik - Google News on 4/19/12
Den Tandt: Breivik an extreme manifestation of the anti-Muslim right The Province By Michael Den Tandt, Postmedia News April 19, 2012 Self-confessed mass murderer and right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik attends the fourth day of court proceedings in Oslo Thursday, where he told a court on April 19 he trained for a year on ... and more » |
via Google News on 4/19/12
 Sky News | Anders Breivik Continues To Give His Testimony On Day Five Of His Trial in Oslo Sky News Mass killer Anders Breivik is to testify for a fifth day, with his lawyers warning that his evidence will be "the most difficult" heard so far in the trial. His testimony, delivered with a lack of remorse, was described by survivors and relatives of ... and more » |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)