The self-confessed author of Norway’s attacks that killed at least 93 people and wounded nearly 100 more says he acted alone, the police said Sunday, as thousands attended a memorial service for the victims.
Anders Behring Breivik, 32, is due to appear in court in Oslo on Monday after telling the police that last Friday’s bombing and shooting attack was “cruel” but “necessary”. “He admitted responsibility” for the twin attacks, his lawyer Geir Lippestad told the Norwegian media. “He feels that it was cruel to have to carry out these acts but that, in his head, it was necessary.”
At least seven people were killed in a car bomb blast outside government buildings in Oslo on Friday and, hours later, a further 85 were shot dead on the nearby island of Utoeya, where a Labour Party youth meeting was being held.
The crimes have caused outrage in Norway amid calls on the Internet for the reinstatement of the death penalty, given the maximum prison sentence the perpetrator can face is 21 years’ imprisonment.
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Norway’s King Harald V and Queen Sonja led the nation in mourning at an emotional memorial mass in Oslo Cathedral for the victims. Mr Stoltenberg said in an address to the hundreds of mourners that the “scale of the evil” would only fully emerge when the names and photographs of the mostly teenaged victims were published.
The death toll rose to 93 on Sunday, after one of those wounded in the attacks died in hospital. The police has not ruled out the involvement of a second gunman,
amid witness reports of a possible second shooter on the island, and on Sunday detained several people in a swoop on an Oslo property thought to be connected to the attacks. They were released shortly afterwards.
“No explosives were found at the location and those detained have been released,” the Oslo police said in a statement following the raid in the Sletteloekka district of the capital. “The police has nothing that could enable these people to be connected with acts of terror.”
Behring Breivik acknowledged the facts resulting from his actions, but rejected “criminal responsibility”, according to the police. “In his mind, he has the feeling that there was nothing reprehensible in what he has done,” his lawyer told NRK.
At the emotion-filled service in Oslo, Mr Stoltenberg wiped his face with a handkerchief and told the hushed congregation that despite the tragedy Norway would demonstrate “more democracy, more openness,
more humanity, but without naivety”. “We are a small country but we are a proud people,” he said as a woman in the congregation sobbed uncontrollably, adding that Norway “will never abandon its values”.
The leader of the Labour Party’s youth group, Eskil Pedersen, wept openly during the service. “We are gathered under the signs of mourning and of hope,” Bishop of Oslo Ole Christian Kvarme told the congregation, many of them wearing black.
Hundreds of people had gathered earlier outside the cathedral where a shrine has been set up amid a sea of flowers laid in tribute to the victims.
Mr Stoltenberg and Mr Pedersen each laid a white rose near the improvised shrine before the service began.
Investigators were Sunday poring over a rambling 1,500-page tract that emerged on the Internet apparently written by Behring Breivik, in which he said he had been preparing the “martyrdom operation” since at least autumn 2009. The Internet document — part diary, part bomb-making manual and part political rant in which he details his Islamophobia — explains how he set up front mining and farming businesses to prepare the attacks for which he was arrested on Friday.
“The reasoning for this decision is to create a credible cover in case I am arrested in regards to the purchase and smuggling of explosives or components to explosives — fertiliser,” says the tract.
The suspect’s estranged father Jens Breivik said from his home in France that he only learned of his son’s involvement when “suddenly I saw his name and picture” on an Internet news site. “We never lived together but we had some contact during his childhood,” said Breivik senior, who divorced from the suspect’s mother. “When he was younger, he was an ordinary boy but not very communicative. He was not interested in politics at the time.”
As harrowing testimony emerged from the summer camp where scores of youngsters were mown down, Norway was struggling to understand how a country famed as a beacon of peace could experience such bloodshed
on its soil.
“Many of those who have died were friends,” Mr Stoltenberg said. “I know their parents and it happened at a place where I spent a long time as a young person... It was a paradise of my youth that has now been turned into hell.”
The toll could rise further as the search continued for four
or five people still missing from the island, aided by a mini-submarine and Red Cross scuba divers.
Blond-haired Behring Breivik described himself on his Facebook page as “conservative”, “Christian”, and interested in hunting and computer games like World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2, reports said.
He also described himself as director of Breivik Geofarm, an organic farm that may have given him access to chemicals used in the production of explosives.
The head of the populist right-wing Progress Party, Norway’s second-biggest political party, confirmed that Behring Breivik had been a member between 1999 and 2006 and for several years a leader in its youth movement. Anti-fascist monitors meanwhile said Behring Breivik was also a member of a Swedish neo-Nazi Internet forum named Nordisk.
The attacks on Friday afternoon were western Europe’s deadliest since the 2004 Madrid bombings, carried out by Al Qaeda.
On arrival at the island, he wore a police pullover and claimed to be investigating the bomb attack and began opening fire with an automatic weapon. The shooting spree lasted for around 90 minutes before he surrendered to armed policemen arriving on the island.
Witnesses described scenes of horror among the more than 500 people attending the youth camp. Some who tried to swim to safety were even shot in the water.