Norwegian suspect’s aim was revolution
Oslo, Norway—The man blamed for attacks on Norway’s government headquarters and an island youth retreat that left at least 93 dead said he was motivated by a desire to bring about a revolution in Norwegian society, his lawyer said on Sunday.
A manifesto published online—which police are perusing and said was posted the day of the attack—ranted that the European elite, “multiculturalists” and “enablers of Islamization” would be punished for their “treasonous acts.”
Police have not confirmed that the suspect, 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, wrote the manifesto, but his lawyer referred to the document and said Breivik had been working on it for years.
In a TV interview on Sunday, Breivik’s lawyer Geir Lippestad said his client had told him that he acted alone. But some witnesses at the island political retreat reported that there was a second assailant, and police said they were looking into that.
Breivik has been charged with terrorism and will be arraigned on Monday.
Police and Lippestad earlier said that Breivik had confessed to the twin attacks, but that he denied criminal responsibility for the attacks that shook peaceful Norway to its core and were the deadliest ever in peacetime.
In all, at least 93 people were killed and 90 wounded. There are still people missing at both scenes, and divers searched the waters around the island on Saturday for bodies. Body parts remain inside the Oslo building, which housed the prime minister’s office.
Both targets were linked to Norway’s left-leaning Labor Party. Witnesses at the island youth retreat described the way Breivik lured them close by saying he was a police officer before raising his weapons. People hid and fled into the water to escape the rampage; some played dead.
Police took 90 minutes from the first shot to reach the island—delayed because they did not have quick access to a helicopter and struggled to find a boat once they reached the lake.
Breivik surrendered when police reached him, but before 86 people died. Another seven were killed in the bombing.
Norway’s King Harald V, Queen Sonja and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg joined mourners on Sunday at Oslo Cathedral, where the pews were packed and the crowd spilled into the plaza outside the building.
The area was strewn with flowers and candles, and people who could not fit in the grand church huddled under umbrellas in the rain.
Portrait of suspect
As stunned Norwegians grappled with the deadliest attack in the country since World War II, a portrait began to emerge of the suspect.
Police identified Breivik as a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, while acquaintances described him as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.
In the 1,500-page manifesto that was posted on the Internet hours before the attacks, 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 1 million people. “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come,” he added.
The manifesto was signed Andrew Berwick, an Anglicized version of his name. A former US government official briefed on the case said investigators believed the manifesto was Breivik’s work.
Cultural Marxism
The manifesto, titled “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 Breivik, with an additional three members unable to attend, including a “European-American.”
The document does not name the attendees or say whether they were aware of Breivik’s planned attacks, though investigators presumably will now try to determine if the people exist and what their connection is to Breivik.
Eerie resemblance
Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said the manifesto bore an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders, although from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view.
Like Breivik’s manuscript, the major al-Qaida declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, a pronounced sense of historical grievance and calls for apocalyptic warfare to defeat the religious and cultural enemy.
“It seems to be an attempt to mirror al-Qaida, exactly in reverse,” Hegghammer said.
Breivik was also believed to have posted on Friday a video summarizing his arguments. In its closing moments, the video depicts Breivik in military uniform, holding assault weapons.
Rarely has a mass murder suspect left so detailed an account of his activities. The manifesto describes in detail his purchase of chemicals, his sometimes ham-handed experiments making explosives and his first successful test detonation of a bomb in a remote location on June 13.
He intersperses the account of bomb-making with details of his television-watching, including the Eurovision music contest and the US police drama “The Shield.”
The manifesto ends with a chilling signoff: “I believe this will be my last entry. It is now Fri July 22nd, 12.51.”
Well-planned
Indeed, the operation appeared to have been extremely well-planned.
According to police, Breivik first drew security services to central Oslo when he exploded a car bomb outside a 17-story government office building, killing at least seven people.
Then he took a public ferry to Utoya Island, where he carried out a remarkably meticulous attack on Norway’s current and future political elite.
Dressed as a police officer, he announced that he had come to check on the security of the young people who were attending a political summer camp there, many of them the children of members of the governing Labor Party.
Breivik gathered the campers together and for about 90 hellish minutes, he coolly and methodically shot them, hunting down those who fled. At least 86 people, some as young as 16, were killed.
Higher death toll
Police said on Saturday evening that they expected the death toll to climb. There were still bodies in the bombed government buildings in Oslo, and at least four people missing on Utoya.
Police also said unexploded munitions were still in some downtown Oslo buildings, and investigators had not ruled out the possibility that Breivik had accomplices.
Breivik was equipped with an automatic rifle and a handgun, police said. When the lawmen finally got to the island about 40 minutes after they were called, Breivik surrendered.
Police also said Breivik had registered a farm in Rena, in eastern Norway, which allowed him to order a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, an ingredient that can be used to make explosives. Authorities were investigating whether the chemical had been used in the bombing.
Other hints of motives
Besides the manifesto, Breivik left other hints of his motives.
A Facebook page and Twitter account were set up under his name days before the rampage. The Facebook page cites philosophers like Machiavelli, Kant and John Stuart Mill.
His lone Twitter post, while not calling for violence, paraphrased Mill—“One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests”—suggesting what he saw as his ability to act.
Those postings, along with what was previously known about Breivik publicly, aligned with but hardly predicted the bloody rampage he would undertake on Friday.
Before then, he had been a member of the right-wing Progress Party, which began as an antitax protest and has been stridently anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. Reports from AP and the New York Times News Service
