Anders Behring Breivik’s lawyer said the killer behind Norway’s July 22 attacks was planning to hit other targets, a local newspaper reported on Friday. “There were several projects of different scale for that Friday,” Geir Lippestad was quoted as telling Aftenposten. “Things happened that day, which I don’t want to go into (here), which meant events unfolded differently from what he had planned,” Lippestad added. Asked about this claim during a press conference, the Norwegian police declined to comment.
However, one of the lead investigators, John Frederiksen, said: “What we can say on an operational level is that with the information obtained in the initial phase of our enquiries and from the elements published (by Behring Breivik), we have inspected a dozen sites to see if there was any kind of threat.
“We have not found anything” to back that up, he added. Behring Breivik said in a 1,500-page manifesto published online just before the carnage, that doubled as a manual for would-be followers: “12 failed attempts on an extremely well-protected individual could have alternatively been 12 successful attacks on lesser targets, executing more than 50 primary targets.” Kept in solitary confinement on a judge’s orders since Monday, the 32-year-old has acknowledged authoring the bomb and gun attacks in Olso and on Utoeya island which killed 76 people, but has not accepted criminal responsibility or plead guilty. Psychiatrists are now assessing whether he is legally insane, as prosecutors seek to bring Behring Breivik to trial next year.
Norway carnage ‘attack on democracy’: PM
OSLO: The carnage in Norway that killed 76 people one week ago was “an attack on our democracy,” Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Friday at a Labour Party commemoration ceremony in the capital.
Stoltenberg led a minute’s silence before delivering his speech to hundreds of members of his party, the youth wing of which was targeted in the deadliest of the twin attacks. “The bullets hit our young, but they also struck an entire nation,” Stoltenberg said of the gun rampage on Utoeya island in which 68 of the victims were killed. “An attack against political engagement is an attack on our democracy,” he said. The crowd at the ceremony held aloft red roses, the Labour Party emblem, in a tribute to the victims. AFP
