OSLO – Survivors and relatives of those killed in a Norwegian mass-murder rampage wept and ridiculed the smiling attacker in court yesterday as he defended his acts by issuing a tirade against immigration.
Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people, provoked tears and laughter in the packed court as he gave a far-right salute and said he had carried out the massacre to prevent his country’s cultural destruction. “The way he talked, the way he smiled . . . everything made me realise that no one has the same picture of the world as he does,” said Helene Georgsen (17), who survived Breivik’s shooting spree.
She said the court appearance helped her realise that the anti-Islam fanatic “can’t hurt me any more”.
Breivik told the court: “The attacks on the government headquarters were preventive attacks on traitors to the nation, people committing or planning to commit cultural destruction, including destruction of Norwegian culture and Norwegian ethnicity.”
He has admitted detonating a fertiliser bomb that killed eight people at a government building in Oslo in July and hours later gunning down participants at an island summer camp for Labour Party youths, killing 69.
Breivik used the routine custody hearing to demand his release on the grounds that “people subjected to genocide” may legally defend themselves. – (Reuters)