One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway

by Åsne Seierstad

  Her father replied.

  what’s happening?

  A few minutes later, Lara texted again.

  Somebody shooting don’t know where Bano is

  Then her father wrote:

  Can you ring me?

  There was no answer. He sent another message.

  I know it not true, you are not Bano or Lara

  A new message from the same unknown number lit up his screen.

  We love you so much. But somethings happened

  It was 17.47.

  * * *

  At the same time, the joint operational centre in Oslo sent out a message to all units.

  ‘01 with important message to all. In connection with both the explosion in the government quarter and the shooting on Utøya in Nordre Buskerud it has been observed that the suspect is wearing a police or security guard uniform – out.’

  When the message went out over the radio, more than two hours had passed since Andreas Olsen, the guards in the government quarter and other eyewitnesses had first reported that the man was in uniform.

  Five minutes later, at 17.52, the local patrol from Nordre Buskerud police station reached the MS Thorbjørn jetty. On the way there, the officers in the car had been informed by their chief of operations: ‘Helicopter on its way, possibly also Delta.’ They were told to exercise caution, and to wait for the police boat.

  When they got out of the car they could hear the shots. They were being fired in a steady stream, controlled and distinct, from two different weapons, never simultaneous or from more than one place on the island at the same time. From this they deduced that it was a lone perpetrator.

  The two policemen were standing on the jetty observing, as they had been ordered to do. Observe, and wait for the police boat. They were heavily armed. And they stood waiting, while the shots rang out on the other side of the strait.

  Official police instructions are that when the situation is defined as ‘shooting in progress’, officers are obliged to make a direct intervention. No such actions were undertaken.

  Utøya was six hundred metres away.

  On a sunny day, there would have been lots of boats in the fjord. Today, it was empty. The boats lay moored close by. The local patrol made no attempt to fetch one to approach Utøya. They did nothing but listen to the shots.

  Since there was a clear line of sight over to the island, the patrol was worried about being shot at. The officers took refuge behind a container on the jetty. Three minutes after arrival, at 17.55, the patrol reported that the rendezvous point would have to be moved up to the road. Eventually one of them went up to the road to direct the traffic and clear the way for the emergency response unit. The two officers lost connection.

  Nordre Buskerud police district had a boat of its own, a red rubber dinghy, which was kept in a trailer outside the police station. But it was not kept in a state of readiness. The incident commander had to inflate the boat and put petrol in the engine. The Hønefoss fire service, on the other hand, had a large and steady boat ready and waiting at the quay by the fire station. They rang at an early stage and offered assistance, but their offer was turned down because the local police had their own boat. When the police station later rang back to ask to use the fire boat after all, they could not get through. The chief of operations rang the fire station again and again, but she was dialling the wrong number.

  Neither the emergency response unit coming from Oslo nor Håvard Gåsbakk on his way from Hønefoss had been given any definite information about where to rendezvous. Gåsbakk, however, took it for granted that it would be at the MS Thorbjørn jetty, straight across from the island.

  The Delta emergency response unit did not know where Utøya was. The first patrol had GPS in its vehicle, but the small islands in the Tyrifjord were not named on the system. The Delta troops in the black cars tried to make contact with Nordre Buskerud police to get definite instructions about where to meet and to alert them to the fact that extra boats would be needed for their personnel. But the emergency network did not yet extend as far as Nordre Buskerud and analogue police radio coverage only worked until Sollihøgda, which was halfway there. Consequently, the telephone was the only form of communication open to them, but the switchboard of the local operations centre was jammed with incoming calls and did not answer the emergency response unit’s call.

  The lack of communication made it impossible to use the journey time to plan or coordinate the operation. When the Nordre Buskerud operations centre was finally informed that Delta was on its way, it was given no indication of how large a force it would be, or that it was coming by road. Right up until 18.00, the local chief of operations assumed the response unit was arriving by helicopter and would fly directly to Utøya.

  When this was finally clarified, a fatal misunderstanding ensued. When Nordre Buskerud informed the response unit where to rendezvous, it said ‘meet on the jetty’.

  ‘Which jetty?’ asked the Delta man. ‘Do you mean the jetty at the golf course?’ It was the only place he knew by the Tyrifjord.

  The chief of operations at Hønefoss held the line while she turned to the chief of staff, who had just come into the station, and said, ‘Delta says the rendezvous point is at the golf course.’

  The chief of staff, on the phone to someone ringing from Utøya, merely nodded and the chief of operations said to Delta:

  ‘Okay, let’s say the golf course.’

  The meeting point was thus moved to a location 3.6 kilometres from the island. The original spot where the patrol from Nordre Buskerud was observing, and where Håvard Gåsbakk was headed, was only six hundred metres from Utøya.

  The occupants of the first vehicle in the response unit convoy had not been told that the meeting point had changed. At 18.01 they turned off the main road and followed the track down to Utvika Camping, next to MS Torbjørn’s jetty. The car drove down to the water, where there were several boats. If they had taken one of the boats moored there, they could have been over on the island within minutes. But here the driver received a radio message instructing him to turn round and go back up the track again. The cars behind did the same manoeuvre, leaving the jetty. Then they were up on the main road again, heading away from the island.

  Gåsbakk had almost reached the Thorbjørn’s landing stage when he was instructed to turn round and drive to the golf course.

  Breivik was killing an average of one person a minute.

  * * *

  He was standing by a low red building known as the schoolhouse. No doubt lots of them were hiding in there, he thought. He fired through the door and heard girls’ screams. He tugged at the door, but on the other side was a man from Norwegian People’s Aid, keeping the handle firmly in place. The room was full of people. Breivik gave up on the schoolhouse. The risk of trying to fight his way in was too great. In the Pelican case he had a can of diesel, which he had planned to pour round buildings and set light to them, so he could shoot people as they came out.

  But he had no lighter on him, so he went back up to the café building to look for one.

  He had now shot and killed forty people on the island. It was time to give himself up; that would increase his chances of surviving the operation. But he had left his mobile in the van with the bomb.

  He did not find a lighter, but he found a mobile phone. He rang the emergency number, 112, and was put on hold. After several attempts he got an answer from the operation centre at Hønefoss. It was 18.01.

  ‘Police emergency line.’

  ‘Yes, good afternoon, my name is Commander Anders Behring Breivik of the Norwegian Anti-communist Resistance Movement.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m on Utøya at the moment. I want to give myself up.’

  ‘Okay, what number are you calling from?’

  ‘I’m calling on a mobile.’

  ‘You’re calling from your mobile?’

  ‘Well, it’s not my mobile, another one…’ replied the man on Utøya, and the call cut out.

>   ‘Another one, what’s your name? Hello … hello…!’

  It was a mobile with no SIM card that Breivik had found, so the number did not come up on the screen at the local police station, and he was never called back.

  He had better carry on, then. Along the path he met a dog that was running around crazily. He had not seen anyone to kill for a long time; where were they all?

  He went along by the water. At the point they had named Stoltenberget he came across a few youngsters and shot and killed three. At the bathing area known as Bolsjevika he found another group, and killed five. The water’s edge gradually became more inaccessible. He went inland again.

  One little gang, lying flat in the tall grass, heard his footsteps. But they could not run, they could not get away, because they were holding a life in their hands.

  Ina’s life.

  After Breivik had left the café building, Ina crawled from behind the piano. She managed to drag herself out of the hall, holding her jaw in place. When she got to the campsite she collapsed. Somebody lifted her over to the skateboard ramp just alongside.

  ‘She’s not going to make it,’ Ina heard them whisper. Then one girl took the lead.

  ‘We’ll take a wound each,’ she commanded. That was how they were sitting around her now, as they heard Breivik approaching, each pressing a stone to one of Ina’s wounds. A woman from Norwegian People’s Aid was lying on the ground with the injured girl resting on top of her, keeping her warm. But Ina was steadily losing blood.

  One of the kids pressing stones to Ina’s wounds had wanted to run and look for his sister, but was told: ‘We need you here.’ That’s when they had seen the man in uniform behind the tall stems of grass. ‘All lie bloody still,’ said the girl who had taken charge.

  He was going down Lovers’ Path.

  If he looked right, he would see them.

  But he looked straight ahead.

  He stopped at a little grey hut he thought must be an outside toilet. He balanced his way down the side of the hut carefully, because it was steep on both sides. He saw one person, then another, then more, a big group of them sitting there, pressed right up against the wall of the little pumping station. Breivik was still a short distance from them.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ he asked.

  Nobody answered.

  ‘Do you know where the last shots came from?’ he asked.

  Nobody moved.

  ‘We haven’t caught the gunman yet, but there’s a boat down by the water ready to evacuate you. Can you gather together? You’ve got to come right away!’

  A couple of girls got up hesitantly. They approached him tentatively. He looked at their faces; some looked relieved, others more sceptical.

  ‘You’ve got to hurry up, before the terrorist comes. We haven’t got him yet.’

  A couple more young people stood up and came towards him.

  ‘Have you got ID? Can you prove you’re a real policeman?’ one of them asked.

  A seventeen-year-old from the Oslo suburbs was one of those making her way towards him. She saw him suddenly give way to irritation, as if frustrated that they were not coming fast enough. He fired a shot. Andrine threw herself into the water. From there, she saw that the girl who had been standing beside her was lying on the ground. Then she saw her best friend Thomas shot. First in the neck, then in the head.

  A girl cried, ‘Help, please!’

  Breivik blasted her down. Then he mowed down those running up the steep slope.

  Andrine felt sudden pressure against her chest. Her neck, her throat, her mouth were filling with blood. A bullet had entered her breast and stopped a few millimetres short of her spine; her lung was punctured. She lay in the shallow water, unable to breathe. She was drowning in blood. Her eyes were wide open. If I close them I shall die, she thought, fighting for air. She saw the man shoot everyone who had stayed by the pumping station. He went over to every single one of them and held his pistol a few centimetres from their heads. And fired and fired and fired.

  Then the killer stopped. He looked round. Surveyed the prone bodies, turned and went up the slope. Then suddenly he swung back round. He stopped, smiled and raised his weapon again.

  He aimed at her. He looked right at her. The shot went through her wellington boot and her foot. Bullets splashed into the water and ricocheted off the rocks all about her, sending chips of stone flying into her face.

  He took aim at her again. Now I’m going to die, she thought. It’s over.

  Breivik pressed the trigger.

  A boy leapt up.

  Andrine thought she was dead when she saw the boy jump forward. He took one bullet – two bullets – three bullets that were meant for her. The first hit him in the hip. The next went into his back and out through his chest. The third crushed his head. He slumped down; he was dead.

  He was Henrik Rasmussen from Hadsel in Nordland. Andrine did not know him. But he had been crouched on the slope, hiding, and had seen her hit repeatedly. So he jumped out in front of her.

  Henrik had turned eighteen that February. The last thing he did before setting off to Utøya was to lead an anti-racism event in his home district.

  ‘Hoho!’ cheered Breivik.

  Then he went. Andrine looked round her. They were all dead. Some were lying face down in the water, others curled into the foetal position. One skull had been cleft in two. The brain lay exposed.

  Andrine waited to die. She waited for all the blood to run out of her. She wanted a white casket at her funeral, completely white. But how could she let people know?

  She could not die. If she did, the sacrifice of the boy she did not know would have been in vain.

  * * *

  Lara had thrown herself into the cold water and started to swim when she heard the first shots from the pumping station. It was about quarter past six.

  As she swam, she could hear shots and screams. Someone begged for their life. ‘Please, don’t shoot! I want to live!’

  On this side of the island, the water had worn cavities into the limestone. She swam along to one of them but it was already full. She swam on, and was able to get into the next one. In there, she was hidden from all angles.

  She saw boats in the channel beyond. Campers and people from the summer cottages dotted round the fjord’s edge were pulling frozen, terrified youngsters out of the water.

  * * *

  Ina and her helpers had also heard the shots from the pumping station. Shots, screams, cries, shots. One of those compressing her wounds whispered, ‘They’re dying, they’re dying, they’re dying,’ over and over again. Then it all went very quiet.

  Ina’s own strength was failing. She had lost a lot of blood. Lying there drowsily, she saw a raindrop glistening on a leaf.

  Just imagine something being so beautiful, here, now, she thought.

  * * *

  In Salangen, Gunnar had the phone in his hand. Just after six he had seen a line of text running along the bottom of the TV screen. ‘Shooting on Utøya’, it said.

  ‘Tone!’

  ‘Tone!!! There’s something on here about a shooting on Utøya.’

  Simon’s mum came rushing in. She burst into tears.

  ‘My boy!’ she cried.

  ‘But you know, Tone, our Simon’s a fast runner and a good swimmer, so he’ll be fine,’ Gunnar reassured her.

  But panic had seized Tone. She had to gasp for breath.

  ‘It’s bound to be some disagreement between a couple of individuals. We mustn’t worry, there’s nothing to indicate Simon’s involved. There are lots of people on the island, after all.’

  But Tone was still anxious.

  A few minutes passed. There was no more information about Utøya. ‘I’ve got to find out about this,’ muttered Gunnar and rang the number from which Simon had last called them.

  ‘Hello, excuse me, this is Gunnar Sæbø, Simon’s father,’ he said. ‘Simon just rang us from this phone.’

  ‘There’s a lunatic going round here shooti
ng. I can’t talk,’ Julie Bremnes whispered back.

  ‘But have you seen Simon?’

  ‘Er, no, we were running together but then we spread out, I haven’t seen Simon for a bit,’ whispered the sixteen-year-old, who was lying in a bay a little beyond the steep slope. ‘I’m hiding, I can’t talk any more,’

  ‘The girl was taking cover, she could only whisper,’ Gunnar told Tone. ‘We can’t ring again, we can’t ring any more. It might get someone hurt.’ But they called the numbers rolling across the screen. Numbers for next of kin, it said. They never got through.

  Tone stood there crying. ‘My boy! My child!’

  Gunnar rang the friends whose birthday party they had been invited to that Friday evening.

  ‘We’re going to be a bit late,’ he said. ‘We’ll come as soon as we’ve made sure Simon’s okay.’

  * * *

  ‘Now it’s fucking kicked off.’

  As the massacre at the pumping station was in progress, around thirty men from Delta, plus the local police, arrived at the bridge by the golf course.

  Their banter was irreverent.

  ‘Terror on Norwegian soil.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s started with a bang.’

  They had been informed that their target was wearing a police uniform. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, thought Gåsbakk. They were also fond of putting on police uniforms, to infiltrate the population before they attacked.

  The message that this was, in all likelihood, a young, blond man in a police uniform had not reached them.

  As Delta established itself at the rendezvous point, the police boat put in at a stone buttress just below the bridge. The heavily armed officers lost no time going aboard. They were eager to get on with the operation; they were in action mode now and wanted to get there the quickest possible way. ‘That’s about it,’ called the boat driver. The red dinghy was registered to carry ten people, and the officers were heavy: each of them had about thirty kilos of equipment, on top of shields and battering rams. With just the driver on board, the bow was steady, but as the men moved about to go further back in the boat and make space for the others water came in over the sides, down into the bottom and over the fuel tank.