He pleaded not guilty and claimed that the attacks were perpetrated upon a nation planning on destroying its own culture and ethnicity. After rambling on for what seemed to be an eternity, he said that he deserved a medal of honor for his deeds.
During the hearing, Dr. Rosenquist pointed out that although Breivik’s manifesto was highly influenced by America’s infamous Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, Breivik couldn’t be compared to him in any full measure. Kaczynski had been a child prodigy who had entered Harvard University at sixteen and had acquired a professorship at the age of twenty-five. Breivik, Dr. Rosenquist insisted, was no genius, though he possessed an above-average intelligence and—like the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, whose bomb recipe he copied—had had all of his faculties while planning and committing his heinous crimes. Not even Rosenquist fully understood the similarities between the three killers.
One fact became evident to most involved with the case and with the decision on how to try Breivik. He, above all those following the case, hoped the verdict was sanity. There was to be no mental hospital for him. No bed where doctors could experiment with his superior mind. No drugs to fog his thoughts. He wanted a place where he could stay properly fit and eat from a menu designed just for him, and where he could have a computer upon which he could begin his first book as a Knight, a savior of his country.
His next court date would be on April 16, 2012, when the full trial would be called into session. The court hadn’t yet decided which panel of experts it would follow, and no one would know which until the final verdict was given. In the Norwegian legal system, insanity or sanity is usually determined before the trial begins; but, unusually in this case, it was not resolved until after the trial was finished.
This sequence of events was a first in Norway’s history.
• An unprecedented second panel to decide Breivik’s mental state.
• A conflicting decision that this mass killer was indeed sane.
• No immediate acceptance of either panel’s findings by the court.
The court system, encouraged by the media, had created a circus, one that would continue throughout the trial.
CHAPTER TEN
THE TRIALS:
“UNLIVABLE INJUSTICE”
Saturday, June 11—Day 41: I prayed for the first time in a very long time today.
—ANDERS BREIVIK MANIFESTO
The trial began with handshakes.
On April 16, 2012, in Oslo’s contemporary-style, monumental District Court Building, both the prosecutors and the defense counsel for the accused, Anders Behring Breivik, shook the defendant’s hand to begin the day in a show of courtesy, as they would for the next two months. Breivik, before taking his seat at the defense table, touched his heart with a clenched fist and then extended it in a straight-armed salute aimed at his accusers.
His face was as calm and unyielding as the courthouse’s white granite exterior. Now minus handcuffs and wearing a black suit and pearl-gray tie, he listened as Judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen asked if he understood the charges against him. He stated that he did not recognize the legitimacy of the court because its authority came from parties supporting multiculturalism, and that the judge herself was a close friend of the former prime minister’s sister.
In a quick, formal address, Judge Arntzen, in her lightweight black robe, made stylish only by its lace collar, said that his protest would be so noted. Then she offered him the opportunity to speak. It was as if the air had been sucked from the room. A man who had admitted to killing more people in one day—singlehandedly—than any other mass murderer in the recorded history of the world, was being asked if he would like to say something on his own behalf, as though he were being questioned about why he had rolled his vehicle through a stop sign.
At this point, many wondered why this trial had proceeded. After all, as already noted, forensic psychiatrists had found Breivik to be suffering from schizophrenia and said that he should have pleaded insanity and been sent to a mental hospital. The court had been bullied into appointing a second panel of experts, and that panel had accommodated public opinion and come to the opposite decision. In that second analysis, the two psychiatrists concluded that Breivik was sane and could be held responsible for his actions. Before the trial had even started, the debate about whether or not a trial should even be happening was already raging.
The court would decide the insanity question when they came back after deliberation on August 24. In the meantime, the trial was going to proceed.
A KIND OF NUMBNESS
During the ten-week-long trial, no one knew what the outcome would be. Those worldwide, who watched this process taking place a five-minute walk from where the government building had been bombed by this madman, wondered where the anger was, the desire for revenge on the part of the Norwegian people. One of the lay judges, before the trial began, had been excused because he expressed his feeling that the only punishment that fit the crime was the death penalty.
Unlike in the United States, there is no jury in the Norwegian court system. The two professional judges were assisted by three (usually four, but the one who was excused was not replaced) lay judges representing the people. Selected randomly, similar to a jury, lay judges are normal citizens of any profession; however, lawyers, police officers, and members of parliament are excluded. In addition to being at least twenty-one years of age, lay judges must speak Norwegian, have a basic knowledge of the Norwegian legal system, and have lived in the country at least three years. Norwegian citizenship is not a requirement. When ruling upon a case, a lay judge’s vote equals the vote of a professional judge.
“I can still tell you Breivik’s exact route on Utøya, and in which order his shots were fired,” one of the lay judges, Diana Fynbo, said, according to an NRK article from December 20, 2012. “It was strange sitting so close to him in the courtroom and feeling all the energy he took in the room.”
Fynbo also said it was daunting to have the press around them at all times, covering the case. Another one of the lay judges, Ernst Henning Eielsen, was caught on camera playing cards on his computer during Lippestad’s questioning of an expert witness on Islam.
Yes, the people of Norway were outraged, but at the same time most seemed to exhibit a kind of numbness. Dismayed with constant television images of the horror, Norwegians just wanted to get on with their lives.
And here was Breivik, now in the courtroom, answering lead prosecutor Svein Holden’s countdown of his failed business ventures with a smile that suggested his boredom about such misunderstood matters. Defense attorney Geir Lippestad, who was relatively unknown before this case, stared back at the accused impassively. Holden, undaunted, mentioned how Breivik had been living with his mother for four and a half years, playing the video game World of Warcraft.
The day ended on a series of notes not befitting the sheer severity of what one would believe a trial of this magnitude deserved. At one point, the only videographer filming the proceedings had caught Breivik showing his first sign of remorse. About five minutes into watching a video he had prepared on his manifesto, he was caught shedding a tear. A tear of what? Pride at his own image? The sorrow that he couldn’t have brought about more deaths before being apprehended? Certainly, it wasn’t related to the victims of his slaughter.
BREIVIK’S TESTIMONY
Day 2 commenced with Breivik’s outthrust hand salute. At that time, he began his testimony, which was expected to go on for about six or seven days. The courtroom remained silent, but one could feel the vibrations of protest against such a lengthy diatribe. The defendant added to the unrest when he asked to be allowed to read a document he deemed essential to his defense.
His lead counsel, Geir Lippestad, said it would take about thirty minutes to read the text. This was a considerable understatement, as the entire reading lasted seventy-seven minutes. This scene in a way previewed the days ahead, where the court seemed to be lured into Breivik’s monologues on his ideology.
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sp; Much of what he read echoed his manifesto. Breivik said he would have preferred to target a group of journalists instead of the island camp. He went on to say “There should be only two outcomes from this case: the death penalty, or an acquittal.” Then he added to the public’s resentment by telling his weary audience that Norway’s maximum sentence of twenty-one years’ imprisonment, no matter the crime, was “pathetic.”
He quoted Norwegian social anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen: “Our most important task ahead is to deconstruct the majority, and we must deconstruct them so thoroughly that they will never be able to call themselves the majority again.”
Breivik believed Eriksen and the rest of the multiculturalists wanted to deconstruct the Norwegian ethnic group so that they would never again constitute a majority.
Prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh asked Breivik why he had broken into tears on the opening day of the trial, and he responded that he had been weeping for Norway and his perception of its deconstruction. “I thought,” he said, “my country and my ethnic group are dying.” Breivik had connected with his ideology and would remain its most loyal defender.
THE ROLE OF COMPUTER GAMES
On Day 4, Breivik didn’t make his appearance with his aggressive clenched-fist salute. Lippestad had become upset with him on the previous day because of his fascist salute, and in his frustration yelled at Breivik: “Don’t you realize what it does to the victims’ families?” According to Lippestad, Breivik turned to him with a surprised look on his face and responded that if that were the case, he would of course discontinue the gesture.
During the prosecution’s questioning, he retained his superior persona as he denied Holden’s team’s assumptions. No, he said to the idea that computer games, stressing violence, could be linked to his actions on that fateful day. This activity was, for him, simply to learn “strategy,” not “violence.” He did concede in interviews prior to the trial that the games did help him go through with his mission in that he put his mind into game-mode.
He testified that the guns he used at Utøya were inscribed with names using Runic script, as he had often done in his computer games. His rifle had the name “Gungnir,” the same as Odin’s spear that returned to its owner upon use. His Glock pistol was “Mjölnir,” the same as the hammer of Thor, the warrior god.
Breivik maintained that he had tried more peaceful methods to convey his ideology; but when he felt that the press and political parties had rejected him, he resorted to violent means. Possible targets he had considered included the actual Labor Party’s convention or a Norwegian journalists’ annual conference. Because he lacked the time to detonate more bombs in Oslo, and because his bombing of the government quarters had failed, he claimed that he had decided to carry out his backup plan, which was the shooting spree on the island.
The courtroom was visibly shaken, and many of those present wept openly, when Breivik said that his goal at Utøya had been to kill everybody. He wanted to frighten the young people there, enough so that everybody would get into the water to escape. The water would then function as a weapon of mass destruction, because everyone would be too panicked and cold to swim the 600 yards to the mainland.
Breivik’s original plans involved three car bombs and shooting sprees across Oslo—“a very large operation,” as he called it. He considered placing a bomb near the Labor Party’s headquarters, the Parliament of Norway Building, the Aftenposten (Norway’s main newspaper) offices, and Oslo City Hall. He also considered bombing the Norwegian Royal Palace. Of course, he explained, he would have forewarned the royals. His battle wasn’t with the symbol of Norwegian royalty but with the Norwegian government.
His goal, he said, was the murder of all members of the Norwegian government cabinet. He also wanted to behead Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Prime Minister of Norway and former Director-General of the World Health Organization. She is often referred to as the “Mother of Norway,” but to Breivik, according to his manifesto, she was the “Murderer of Norway.” He added that he imagined handcuffing her and then beheading her using the bayonet on his rifle, recording the killing on an iPhone, and posting it online. Breivik might have modeled his plan on al Qaeda’s execution of journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. The court noted that when describing how to kill the former prime minister, Breivik seemed excited. To Breivik, Brundtland was the ultimate symbol of the Labor Party and the “multicultural pack,” which had bullied him and the rest of the population into silence. Maybe his wish to kill her was a subconscious wish to kill his own mother, who had been the cause of so many of his attachment issues.
He then made an abrupt shift to talk about his video games. Call of Duty, a game he admittedly played for sixteen straight months, was one he actually didn’t like. “It was necessary,” he said, to gain what he called “targeting skills.” One can only imagine how this statement must have sounded in open court, let alone to the survivors of his sharpshooting, who were following his testimony.
A “SMALL BARBARIAN ACT”
Breivik, on the fifth day of the trial, asked the court to distinguish “clinical insanity” from what he alleged as his own “political extremism,” and conceded that what he did had caused huge suffering. He could potentially comprehend the human suffering resulting from his actions, he said, but had managed to block this from his “immediate consciousness in order to cope.”
On that day, something in the courtroom’s atmosphere seemed to darken. It was as if the first gray clouds had passed, but now the true storm was on its way. People began to flinch as Breivik talked and went into great detail about what he had done on the island. The victims’ families and survivors heard it all as he described his hesitations and feelings of unease as he set out. Then he described how his victims had reacted. He said he had never seen on television how people in such circumstances might become effectively immobilized. He then described how he found some of the young people lying on the ground pretending to be dead, and how he shot them too.
Breivik said that there were gaps in his memory of some of the approximately ninety minutes he spent killing on the island. He also said that he had considered wearing a swastika for the operation, to provoke further fear, but chose not to because he didn’t want to appear to be a Nazi sympathizer.
The mass murderer insisted that he was ordinarily a nice person. He said that he very nearly backed out of doing the operation on the island, and that while he was carrying it out, he was in a state of what he described as shock, so he focused simply on functioning. He had managed to distance himself from the reality of the horror and put his mind in a computer-game mode. He spoke as if he were the one who deserved sympathy, as if the audience would understand his struggle and that he, in the end, was a saint for having had the guts to go through with it. He also maintained that he spared a few people on the island because they were so young.
One could almost hear the approaching thunder, crawling through Oslo’s business center. As much as the court’s dignitaries wanted to control the tempest, to shield their citizens in this place of justice, they weren’t prepared, and it was as if an ill wind had shaken the beautiful structure’s artful exterior.
“No one,” someone in the courtroom said, as if predicting the following days, “should be expected to bring justice to this madness.”
Breivik’s story of horror continued into the next day. Unbelievably, the prosecution wanted more. “What I’ve done,” Breivik went on in his twisted logic, “was create a small barbarian act to prevent a larger barbarian act.”
He had lost everything that day, his family, his friends, his life as it had been, he told the court. Yet he had felt a compulsion to kill, but only because it would prevent something worse in the future.
Everyone listening must have been thinking how insane this monster was, or how they wished the police had killed him on sight once they’d found him brazenly walking toward them in his war suit, his guns and ammo still clinging to his person, asking for a bandage.
Breivi
k must have smelled the instinctual aggression riding this otherworldly wind. He was the “victim” of a racist plot, he said. Wasn’t it obvious? The prosecution still wanted him declared legally insane so they could drug him into silence. The prosecution, he insisted, was out to delegitimize his ideology.
At this, the judge looked aghast at her lead prosecutor, her fine features earnest but perplexed, her short blondish hair not brushed that morning. Something faded in her normally lively eyes when she removed her glasses for a moment to touch her temple.
And Geir Lippestad scratched the top of his clean-shaven scalp, and probably reminded himself for the sixth time in six days that he’d taken this job because every criminal, regardless of his or her crime, deserved a proper defense. Or so he had said.
Breivik’s trial stands in deep contrast to the trials of Kaczynski and McVeigh, where the considerations for the victims were the focus. The need for justice and punishment of this kind has no place in Norway’s penal system. In the United States, trying and sentencing a perpetrator is about making him or her take responsibility for his or her crime, and it’s about trying to achieve justice for the victims. “Punishment” is not a taboo word.
On Tuesday, May 5, 1998, Kaczynski was sentenced to four life terms in prison after agreeing to a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty.
“Lock him so far down that when he dies, he will be closer to hell,” Susan Mosser said, according to a May 5, 1998 article in the Washington Post by William Booth. Mosser’s husband’s body had been ripped open by an exploding package mailed by Kaczynski.
The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer Page 18
