Anders Behring Breivik trial, day four

Author: Category: Greg's Blog


3.16pm: Here’s a recap of today’s proceedings:

• Anders Behrin Breivik said he “trained” for the attacks using the computer game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The 33-year-old said he practised his shooting using a “holographic aiming device” he had bought to use with the war simulation game, which he said is used by armies around the world for training. “You develop target acquisition,” he said. He used a similar device during the shooting attacks on Utøya. The defendant also said the computer game helped him to rehearse various scenarios, including fighting his way out of the government quarter after the car bombing. In the event he was not spotted planting the bomb.

• He told the court he had originally planned to behead – while filming her – Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Labour prime minister of Norway, on the island of Utøya, where he killed 69 people at a Labour youth camp. He told the court he planned to handcuff her, before “decapitating” her using a bayonet on his rifle and then filming the execution on an iPhone.

• His original intention was to detonate three car bombs and then drive around Oslo on a mini motorbike shooting people until he himself was killed, said Breivik. The targets were Oslo’s government district, the Labour party’s office and possibly the royal palace as a third target. Other possibilities for the third target included the headquarters of the newspapers Aftenposten and Dagsavisen, or the Norwegian parliament building.

• Breivik claimed he didn’t want to carry out the gun massacre on Utøya but that he was “forced” to do so because Norwegian and EU regulations had made it difficult to acquire sufficient bomb making equipment. “It’s easy to press a button and detonate a bomb,” he said. “It’s very very difficult to carry out something as barbaric as a firearm-based action.”

• In testimony that made for harrowing listening and left many in tears, the accused said that while Bruntland was his main target, he wanted everyone on Utøya to die. “The objective was not to kill 69 people at Utøya. The objective was to kill all of them,” he said. Breivik said he never intended to kill anyone “under 18″ but that it was hard to assess his victims’ ages when so many had their backs to him. Nevertheless, he described them as “legitimate targets” because of their support for multiculturalism.

• Breivik also said he considered the bomb in the government quarter, which killed eight people, a “failure” because the government building was still standing and that 12 deaths was the minimum requirement for it to be a “success”. He said the goal was to kill the entire government, including the prime minister.

2.48pm: With Breivik pleading that he is tired, the court is adjourned for the day. I’ll post a summary of today’s proceedings shortly.

2.46pm: Breivik is talking about how he controls his emotions and cites meditation.

2.32pm: The accused claims that he intended to avoid civilian casualites in the bomb attack.

2.28pm: As with the attack on Utøya, Breveik says he was disappointed that the bomb did not kill more, in particular he wanted to slay members of the government, especially the prime minister. He also recalls hearing on the radio that the attack could be linked to the death of Osama bin Laden.

2.15pm: The accused is describing the morning of 22 July, and his trip to the government quarter to plant the bomb, in detail, as captured in a series of tweets by the freelance journalist Trygve Sorvaag

2.07pm: Breivik is describing 22 July now and how he woke up thinking it would be the last day of his life.

2.02pm: Now the accused describes how he put up a sign to explain away the strong smell of the bomb.

1.58pm: After going in to a lot of detail about how he made the bomb, Breivik goes in to his physical preparation and how he took anabolic steroids to “increase performance” before the attacks.

1.45pm: Breivik is being asked about how he manufactured a bomb at the farm.

1.39pm: The defendant claims he bought biological weapons to attack the Norwegian Labour party’s national congress.

1.36pm: Breivik is talking about Utøya once more.

1.31pm: Breivik boasts that he could have killed the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, if he had so desired.

1.25pm: Helen Pidd, in Oslo, has written this account of the last session, the most harrowing in the trial so far.

Anders Behring Breivik has claimed he didn’t want to carry out the gun massacre that left 69 dead on Utøya island, but that he was “forced” to do so because Norwegian and EU regulations had made it difficult to acquire sufficient bomb making equipment.

Giving evidence on the fourth day of his trial, the 33-year-old said he would have preferred to carry out three bomb attacks rather than target Utøya, where the Norwegian Labour party was holding its annual youth summer camp on 22 July last year. In the end, he went on the rampage on the island after planting one bomb in Oslo’s government district, killing eight people.

Attempting to explain his logic, he said: “It’s easy to press a button and detonate a bomb. It’s very very difficult to carry out something as barbaric as a firearm-based action.”

To do so, he claimed, was difficult. “It is contrary to human nature to execute something like this,” he said. “You have to work on yourself for a very long time to make yourself do this … to hammer away at your emotions.”

Breivik said he never intended to kill anyone “under 18″ on Utøya but that it was hard to assess his victims’ ages when so many had their backs to him.

He revealed on Thursday that his original plan for the Utøya attack was to time his arrival on the island with a visit from Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Labour prime minister. He told the court he planned to handcuff her, before “decapitating” her using a bayonet on his rifle and then filming the execution on an iPhone.

“The plan was to chop her head off with [the bayonet] while reading a text and then upload the film to the internet,” he said.

Brundtland was his main target, said Breivik, adding that he nonetheless expected everyone on the island to die. “The objective was not to kill 69 people at Utøya … the objective was to kill all of them,” he said, adding that he planned to fire shots, scaring the campers into the water where he anticipated they would drown.

1.21pm: The trial has resumed and Breivik is being asked about his preparations for the 22 July attacks.

1.03pm: The journalists in court, as well as survivors and bereaved relatives, have been deeply affected by Breveik’s description of his plans for his killing spree on Utøya.

12.53pm: The court has adjourned early for an afternoon break after the prosecutor requested it in the light of what’s been heard about Utøya. Recess will last 15 minutes.

12.47pm: Despite his lack of remorse, Breivik is blaming others for his actions on 22 July.

12.44pm: The defendant claims he planned to focus on killing adults, but expresses no regret for any deaths. On day two of the trial, he described the victims on Utøya as “not innocent”.

12.39pm: Breivik talks about the idea of using decapitation, mentioning al-Qaida. But he says it was also used in Europe in the past.

12.34pm: In words that will make painful listening for the survivors and bereaved families, Breivik expresses regret that he did not kill everyone on Utøya.

12.31pm: Breivik has described al-Qaida as “methodological role models”, adding that he learned a lot from them. What he is describing now sounds eerily similar to their methods, as he says he planned to film a decapitation of the former prime minister Harlem Brundtland, who was on Utøya island.

12.25pm: The accused has listed a number of potential targets he considered for attack, including the offices of media outlets and the Norwegian royal palace. Now he is asked why he targeted the Labour party youth camp at Utøya, where he would kill 69 people.

12.19pm: Breivik says that before his attacks he studied the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, which killed 168 people, perpetrated by Gulf war veteran Timothy McVeigh.

12.13pm: Moving on to his actual target in the government quarter, the accused says he carried out four reconnaissance missions and took precautions to avoid raising suspicions.

12.06pm: The court is in session again and Breivik is talking once more about alternative plans he had for attacks.

11.46am: Helen Pidd, in Oslo, has been talking to a journalist from Aftenposten about Breivik’s comments this morning that he identified the newspaper’s offices as a potential target.

Harald Stanghelle, political editor of Aftenposten, one of the newspapers Breivik today said he would have liked to attack, has just told me that it was difficult to sit in court “two metres away” from the man who wanted him dead.

Stanghelle said: “If I had heard this a year ago I would have dismissed it as nonsense, the words of a fantasist. But after 22 July, we know what he was capable of. It could have been us.”

Breivik had told the court that he was planning to attack the high-rise Aftenposten building containing the liberal journalists he sees as representatives of the “cultural marxists” he so despises. But he abandoned the plan after reasoning that too many “innocent civilians” would be killed. The newspaper only occupies “a few” floors in the block, alongside normal businesses, which is why he ruled it out as a target, said Breivik.

Journalists at Aftenposten were told by police in November that Breivik had seen them as a prime target, so it was not such a shock to hear him repeat the claims today, said Stanghelle. Security at Aftenposten and most other Norwegian media outlets has been stepped up since the 22 July attacks.

Breivik said another organisation he wanted to target was Dagsavisen, a daily newspaper which used to be owned by the Labour party in Norway. But “the most attractive target in all of Norway” would be to hit the NRK, the Norwegian national broadcaster, he said.

11.37am: The court remains adjourned for lunch. Proceedings should resume at 12pm BST

A woman claiming to be Breivik’s girlfriend tried but was refused entry to court yesterday, Hope Not Hate reports, citing German tabloid Bild. She is believed to be from Stuttgart, it says.

11.07am: Helen Pidd, in Olso, has filed a story on this morning’s proceedings. I will post a link when it is up on the Guardian website. In the meantime, here is an excerpt:

Anders Behring Breivik has described how he “trained” for the attacks he carried out in Norway last summer using the computer game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

The 33-year-old said he practised his shot using a “holographic aiming device” he had bought to use with the war simulation game, which he said is used by armies around the world for training. “You develop target acquisition,” he said. He used a similar device during the shooting attacks which left 69 dead at a political youth camp on the island of Utøya on 22 July.

Describing the game, he said: “It consists of many hundreds of different tasks and some of these tasks can be compared with an attack, for real. That’s why it’s used by many armies throughout the world. It’s very good for acquiring experience related to sights system.”

He added: “If you are familiar with a holographic sight, it’s built up in such a way that you could have given it to your grandmother and she would have been a super marksman. It’s designed to be used by anyone. In reality it requires very little training to use it in an optimal way. But of course it does help if you’ve practised using a simulator.”

The prosecution asked Breivik if he was aware “there are some bereaved people sitting here in the courtroom who lost children at Utøya.” How do you think they are feeling, Breivik was asked. “They are probably reacting in a natural way, with disgust and horror,” he said.

The court also heard that Breivik took what he called a “sabbatical” for a year between the summers of 2006 and 2007, which he devoted to playing another game, World of Warcraft (WoW), “hardcore” full time. He admitted he spent up to 16 hours every day that year playing from his bedroom in his mother’s Oslo flat.

But he insisted WoW had nothing to do with the attacks he carried out last year leaving 77 dead.

He said: “Some people like to play golf, some like to sail, I played WoW. It had nothing to do with 22 July. It’s not a world you are engulfed by. It’s simply a hobby.”

He added: “WoW is only a fantasy game which is not violent at all. It’s just fantasy. It’s a strategy game. You cooperate with a lot of others to overcome challenges. That’s why you do it. It’s a very social game. Half of the time you are connected in communication with others. It would be wrong to consider it an antisocial game.”

11.04am: The court has adjourned for lunch. Proceedings will resume in an hour.

11.02am: The accused continues to discuss his preparations for the attack, including his training and how he changed his plan for three bombs after realising how hard it was to make them.

10.51am: Breivik is talking about other potential targets, saying his initial plan was for three car bombs followed by a shooting.

10.48am: Breivik is contesting the claim made in the first psychiatrist’s report — which declared him “criminally insane” — that he only decided to become violent in 2009. He says it was 2006.

10.36am: Breivik says that, unlike other groups, he thought it was better to attack the political elite rather than Muslims because “it’s not the fault of the Muslims that they have been invited here.”

10.26am: Breivik says he does not agree with everything in the manifesto, describing it as a draft.

10.18am: Breivik is talking about his manifesto and justifying the use of violence which it advocates.

10.04am: Breivik explains that the title of his “compendium”, or manifesto, “2083 – A European declaration of independence”, refers to 400 years since the battle of Vienna, when the Ottoman army was defeated.

9.55am: The trial resumes. Breivik says he started writing his manifesto in 2007, which prompts the question as to why he waited so long after the meeting of the Knights Templar that he claimed to have attended in 2002 to begin. (Breivik said earlier that 50 pages of notes from that meeting formed the basis of the manifesto). Breveik’s response to the prosecutor: “I needed a sabbatical.”

He identifies the 40% of the manifesto which he wrote himself as part 3, on the military.

9.23am: The defendant claims that 50 pages of notes he took from the Knights Templar meeting (which he says he attended in London in 2002) formed the basis of his manifesto.

The court has adjourned for a 20-minute break.

9.18am: Breivik admits that 60% of his 1,801-page manifesto was created by cutting and pasting from other documents.

9.11am: The accused did do real weapons training, as well as playing computer games. He tells the court he gave his weapons names.

9.08am: Breivik explains how he never expected to succeed with the bomb attack on the government quarter.

9.00am: Another computer game Breivik played was Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, a first-person shooting game, he tells the court. He says he used the game for target practice.

8.52am: Not for the first time, Breivik accuses the prosecution of trying to ridicule him after he responds to a question asking about what he did on the New Year’s Eve before the attacks by saying that he stayed in playing computer games. The accused also tries to counter any perception of him as a loner.

8.46am: Breivik says the year off also helped him prepare for the attacks but that the game had nothing to do with them.

8.38am: The accused talks about his year off spent playing the online fantasy role-playing game, World of Warcraft, describing it as a “sabbatical”. He denies that the game is violent. (Correction: please note that in one of the tweets below it says “World of Wafare” when it should be “World of Warcraft”)

8.34am: Breivik is trying to paint a picture of himself as a successful entrepreneur.

8.26am: Breivik is being questioned about his business dealings, which he tells the court were carried out with a view to financially supporting the cause he believed in – “ultra-nationalism”.

8.24am: When Breivik opened today by asking to talk about the first forensic psychiatric report, carried out last year, that found him to be “legally insane” he mocked the psychiatrists who compiled it by changing their names to famous Norwegian fairytale writers, freelance journalist Trgve Sorvaag tweets.

A later report deemed that Breivik was legally sane, which is what he wants the court to find.

The prosecutor, Svein Holden, told the accused he can discuss the reports next week but not today.

8.10am: Breivik and the prosecutor are in disagreement over what should be the topic of discussion this morning.

Breivik described himself yesterday as a “militant Christian” but not particularly religious. On the first day of his trial he said he was drawn to Catholicism.

8.05am: For the first time since the trial began, Breivik has not given a closed-fist salute at the start of the day’s proceedings in court.

8.03am: Good morning. Welcome to live coverage of day four of the trial of Anders Behring Breivik.

The chief judge said yesterday that today’s proceedings would focus on the events leading up to 22 July last year and on the bomb that Breivik has admitted planting in the government quarter of Oslo, killing eight people.

TV cameras are once more banned from broadcasting but the Guardian’s Helen Pidd is in court and will be filing updates.

Breivik said yesterday he would prefer execution over a “pathetic” 21-years jail term.
Here is a link to yesterday’s blog.

And here is a link to Helen’s news story covering yesterday’s proceedings.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/19/anders-behring-breivik-trial-live

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