Norway’s Deadliest Massacre Since WW2

Anders Breivik carried out two terrorist attacks on Norway in one day and the world could only watch on in shock as unfathomable horrors unfolded.

Anders Breivik Childhood

Anders Breivik was born on February 13, 1979, in Oslo, Norway to parents Jen and Wenche Breivik. He spent the first year of his life in London, while his father worked as an economist at the Norwegian embassy. It wasn’t long after this move to London that his parents went their separate ways, and a young Breivik moved back to Oslo with his mother.

Despite living in Oslo’s affluent West End, and spending summers in Paris to visit his father, Breivik’s childhood wasn’t as perfect as it seemed on the surface. Reports show that psychologists had raised concerns about how his mother treated him. It’s said that she ‘sexualised’ Breivik from a young age, hit him, and frequently told him that she wished he was dead. She is described as being a woman who had herself had an extremely difficult upbringing and suffered from borderline personality disorder and depression, and it is said that she projected her aggressive and sexual fantasies onto her son.

Authorities involved with the family wanted to remove him from his mother’s care, and psychologists who observed him as a child have come forward to express their view on the inadequacy of the Child Welfare Services at the time, acknowledging that removing Breivik from his abusive home could have changed the course of his life, and ultimately, could have potentially saved those who he went on to murder in cold blood.

During her pregnancy, Breivik’s mother developed a deep disdain for him. She claimed that he was a “nasty child” and that he would “kick her on purpose”. She had wanted to abort him but at the time she returned to Norway from the UK, she had already passed the three-month threshold for a legal abortion. She stopped breastfeeding her son pretty early on because she claimed he was ‘sucking the life out of her’. In 1981, she applied for economic help and in 1982 applied for respite care for her son — unable to cope with how clingy he was with her.

Breivik was placed with a young couple, who would later tell police that his mother when bringing two-year-old Breivik to their house, had asked that he be allowed to touch the man’s penis because Breivik had no one to compare himself to in terms of appearance as all he ever saw were girls’ parts. This has been taken to suggest Breivik was already being sexually abused, as young as two years old.

Psychiatrists concluded Breivik should be placed in the foster care system and that he needed to be removed from his mother to allow him to develop normally. They had begun to observe that he was almost completely void of any emotional engagement; he didn’t show joy, nor did he cry when he was hurt, he made no attempts to play with other children and would become extremely anxious if his toys weren’t in order. Psychologists believe his mother had punished him and reacted extremely negatively to him displaying emotions which had led him to become devoid of any visible emotions.

However, despite the recommendation, Child Welfare Services did not put him into foster care. They did not appear to understand how harmful the treatment from his mother was. Instead, he was placed in respite care during the weekends.

He went to Hartvig Nissen High School, and Oslo Commerce School, taking online courses in small business management. He was described by fellow students as highly intelligent, and the type of person who stuck up for those being bullied.

When he was 15, he joined the Lutheran Church of Norway, and as he moved into adolescence, his behaviour started to become more rebellious. In his early teen years, he began graffitiing and joined the local hip-hop community in Oslo West. He got caught by the police regularly and was fined for his crimes.

When he was around 15 years of age, he cut contact with the hip-hop community he was a part of, and he also ditched his best friend. He cut off contact with his father and began to weight train, using steroids to help him bulk up. Breivik was withdrawing entirely from the world.

The Plot for Mass Murder Begins

Anders Breivik claims his plans for mass murder began when he was just 23 years old. Firstly, to finance the plan, he founded a computer programming company while continuing to work in a customer service job. He claims to have made his first million kroner, (approx £82k) when he was just 24 years old, and shortly after he had 2 million kroner to finance his attack.

How true this is, no one really knows, as our only source of information is from Breivik himself, what is of record, however, is that his company closed due to bankruptcy, and he returned to living with his mother to save money. His mental health was in rapid decline, and he became even more isolated and withdrawn from those around him. Behind closed doors, he was continuing to plot his attack on the world.

In May 2009, he set up a farming company and began to buy fertiliser in bulk. In 2010, he visited Prague in an attempt to buy illegal weapons but failed to do so, and returned to Norway empty-handed.

Instead, he bought a semi-automatic 9mm Glock 34 pistol, legally, in Norway by joining a pistol club, and further gained a semi-automatic Ruger Mini-14 rifle by possessing a hunting licence.

On 23 June 2011, he paid off the outstanding amounts on his credit cards, to have access to additional funds during his preparations. In late June or early July 2011, he moved to a rural area around 87 miles northeast of Oslo, which was where his farm was. The farm acted as a cover to enable the legal purchase of fertiliser and other chemicals he needed to manufacture explosives.

The Timeline of 22 July 2011

The horrific attacks of 22 July 2011 happened in two stages that day.

Attack Number One:

· At 3:13 pm a white VW Crafter was registered by surveillance cameras entering Grubbegata from Grensen. The car stopped 200 meters before the H block of the government building and remained there, with hazard lights on for 1 minute and 54 seconds.

· At 3:15 pm the driver began to drive the last 200 meters to the H block, and one minute later turned into the parking lot in front of the main government building — completely ignoring the ‘no entry’ sign. Parking in front of the main entrance, the driver steps out of the car, before quickly walking away to where he had a silver Fiat Doblo waiting.

· At 3:18 pm a witness saw a suspicious-looking man leaving the government quarter in downtown Oslo. He then saw the man unlock a car, before driving the car towards the traffic in a one-way street. Suspicious, he took down the registration number.

· At 3:25 pm — a bomb placed in the first car exploded near the office of the Prime Minister. One minute later, the police receive the first reports of the explosion, and two minutes after that they are on the scene.

· 30 minutes later, just before 4 pm, it is confirmed that the Prime Minister is unharmed.

Attack Number Two:

· Brievik drives the less than 1-hour journey out of the city centre to Utoya Island.

· The island was being used as a summer camp for youth attendees of the Worker’s Youth League. The League was a youth group for the Norweigan Labour Party, and all participants were gathered in the main house, excited to be told about the event.

· At 4.52 pm, Breivik, in his Fiat Doblo passes a traffic camera just a 3-minute driving distance from the ferry landing terminal. His car was going at average speed — he was not in a rush, and not drawing any attention to himself.

· At 4.55 pm, Breivik, disguised as a police officer, arrived at the ferry landing and boarded the ferry to Utoya Island. He arrived there at 5.18 pm.

· Just 4 minutes later the first shot is fired. Two minutes after that, emergency medical services are informed about the shooting, and just one minute after that the police in Oslo are told.

· At 5.30 pm, a tactical unit is dispatched, and they arrive at 5.50 pm.

· Those on the island described seeing a blonde police officer arrive, before immediately raising his weapon and opening fire. Realising he wasn’t a real police officer they began to flee, but were limited by the island being cut off. They hid wherever they could; inside rocks near the shore, cabins in the trees, some even jumped in the water and attempted to swim back to shore and the ferry port on the other side.

Back at the ferry port, the tactical unit had to wait for the ferry to get back from the island, and while they waited, Breivik called the police to surrender, before hanging up and continuing to kill people on the island.

A boat arrived to take the police over to the island, but it was too small for all the people and their equipment, and the engine cut out halfway across. They quickly transferred into two privately owned boats to complete their journey.

They arrive on the island at 6.25 pm.

The first shot was fired more than an hour earlier at 5.22 pm.

Anders Breivik had been unchallenged on the island for more than an hour, indiscriminately shooting at those who were there.

He called the police once more to surrender, before again hanging up.

Nine minutes after they arrive on the island, police arrest Breivik — without incident.

In the space of just over three hours, Anders Breivik killed 8 people in the car bomb in Oslo, and 69 people on Utoya island. More than 200 people were injured in the attacks. Shockingly, and most horrifically, the majority of the victims were aged just 18 years old or younger.

Arrest

Following his arrest, Breivik was held by armed police on the island and interrogated throughout the night before being moved to a cell in Oslo. He admitted guilt, and gave a reason for his attack: he wanted to save Norway and Western Europe from a Muslim takeover and he felt the Labour Party had a price to pay for letting Norway and its people down.

On 25 July 2011, he was charged with two charges of terrorism which meant police could hold him for 8 weeks, four of which were in solitary confinement, while he waited for court appearances. This period was continuously extended at subsequent hearings as they prepared for a trial.

Many psychologists assessed him and decided he was criminally insane. Their diagnosis was he had paranoid schizophrenia, and was psychotic at the time of the attacks. They believed he lacked empathy, had grandiose and delusional thoughts, and was living in a world of his own, acting on these unusual thoughts. Anders Breivik, it seemed, believed he was a warrior sent to save Norway.

This finding by psychologists however was heavily debated, and after a lot of pressure from all sides, the court ordered a second expert panel to review his mental state in January 2012.

At first, he refused to cooperate but eventually underwent new testing in late February. These new tests were key to the entire trial; if they found he was criminally insane, he wouldn’t serve any prison time, instead, he would be sent to a secure psychiatric hospital.

Despite many people expecting the results to come back supporting the suggestion he was insane, on 10 April 2012, the second evaluation found that he was not psychotic during the attacks, and was not psychotic during their evaluation. He was instead diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.

He was taken back to Utoya in August 2011 to reconstruct his actions for the police. There, he described the killings in detail, and photos taken by the press show him demonstrating how he fired shots into the water to kill CHILDREN who were hiding there or attempting to flee.

At a pre-trial hearing in February 2012, Breivik gave a statement demanding his release and said he should be treated as a hero for his ‘pre-emptive attack against traitors’ accusing the Labour Party of planning cultural genocide. He said what they were doing was a form of ethnic cleansing.

Trial

His trial took place on 16 April 2012 in the Oslo Courthouse. The trial lasted until 22 June. He admitted to carrying out the attack but denied any criminal guilt. He was sentenced on 24 August 2012, where he was sentenced to ‘containment’ which is a special type of prison sentence that can be extended indefinitely. It has an approximate period of 21 years, but a minimum term of 10 years. This was the maximum penalty available in Norway at the time.

He did not appeal his sentence and on 8 September 2012, it was announced as final. He was transferred to Telemark Prison to serve his prison sentence.

Post sentence

Since 2015, he has had visits from a military chaplain every two weeks. His mum also visited him five times before she died in 2013. He gave an interview in 2014, but no one else has been allowed to visit. He’s isolated from other prisoners, and not allowed internet access. In March 2016, his lawyer released a statement saying Breivik had become a Nazi in prison. Also in 2016, he attempted to sue the government over his solitary confinement, arguing that it violated his human rights. When attending court for this case, he gave a Nazi salute to the gallery. On 20 April 2016, the court said that the conditions of his imprisonment did breach Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but that Article 8 had not been violated. The government had to pay his legal fees.

Utoya Island Victims

Oslo City Bombing Victims

Sources: The Guardian, Wikipedia, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Times