His hands were cuffed in front of him and connected to a wide belt fastened round his hips. A broad-shouldered detention guard fumbled with a key to unlock the handcuffs. The accused gave an almost apologetic look to the audience as the man struggled to remove the cuffs. Once they were off, dangling from the hip belt, he clamped his right fist to his chest, thrust his arm out straight and then raised it in a salute. Long enough for the photographers to immortalise the moment, he held the clenched fist at head height. A gasp ran through the courtroom. It was five to nine.
He raises his arm in a right-wing extremist salute, wrote the news agencies. He pours himself a glass of water. Drinks. Looks at a pile of papers he has in front of him. Messages flashed out second by second from the journalists in the room.
The public prosecutors go over and shake hands with him!
Foreign journalists were bewildered to see this cordiality. Were they really shaking his hand?
The public advocates and the victims’ defence lawyers shake his hand too!
In some countries they would have put him in a cage. They would have taken his suit and white shirt and cropped his hair. His gleaming silk tie would have been out of the question.
In a cage or not, there were many in the room who would willingly have seen him humiliated. And humiliation was what he himself feared most of all. Being reviled was nothing in comparison to being humiliated.
Having people uncover the cracks in him.
Tørrissen once asked him about vulnerability. ‘Do you have a vulnerable side?’ the psychiatrist had asked. ‘Not being loved,’ Breivik answered. ‘That must be every person’s greatest fear, not being loved.’
Now he hoped for one thing. That his mother would not appear in the witness box. She had been called to give evidence, but she had asked to be excused. She was his Achilles heel, he had told the psychiatrists. She was the only one who could disconcert him now, bring the whole thing down. That was why he had not agreed to any prison visits from her before the trial. Up to now, everything had gone as he wanted it. The eyes of the whole world were on him.
The public prosecutors and public advocates returned to their places after the handshakes. He sat down.
He sits down.
It was nine o’clock.
The judges come in.
The court rose; the two public prosecutors, the defence lawyers, the public advocates, the public, the press, everybody rose, except for one: the defendant.
He remains in his seat. He smiles.
That is to say, he tried to conceal a smile. He sat with his legs planted wide apart. Everyone could see that he was not in shackles beneath the desk. He shifted round in the comfortable chair, which had a good, broad back. He looked round, settled himself into the chair. His eyes scanned the rows of seats. Suddenly his lips curved into yet another smile. He had seen someone he knew. Kristian, his former friend and partner, was in the front row. What was he doing here?
Well, the tabloid Verdens Gang had invited him to use one of their places so he could tell their readers afterwards what it was like to see his former friend again. Both of them averted their eyes.
* * *
‘The court is in session!’
There was a quick rap of the gavel on the bench. The head judge, Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen, made an authoritative figure. She was an experienced judge, around fifty years of age. She had short, greying hair, clear blue eyes and a thin mouth. At the neck of her robe was a hint of a lace blouse.
The accused wanted to set the agenda from the start, and spoke immediately.
‘I do not recognise the Norwegian court or law because your mandate has come from parties that support multiculturalism.’
He cleared his throat. The judge looked straight at him and was about to say something when he continued.
‘I am also aware that you are a friend of Gro Harlem Brundtland’s sister.’
His voice was high-pitched.
The judge asked if that meant he wished to raise a concrete objection to her participation in the proceedings. The defence team shook their heads. Not as far as they knew.
No, he did not want that. He simply wanted to make a point.
Wenche Arntzen set out the procedural rules for the trial. She was rapid and concise. There was no time to lose here. She asked the accused to stand and confirm his full name and date of birth.
‘Anders Behring Breivik, born 13th of February, 1979.’
He appeared meek now, and spoke in little more than a mumble.
When the judge came to his profession, she said, ‘Well, you are not working.’
Breivik protested.
‘I am a writer and I work from prison,’ he said.
He was instructed to sit down.
* * *
Then the charges were to be read out by the female half of the prosecution duo, the blonde and elegant Inga Bejer Engh.
‘Please go ahead,’ said Arntzen.
Bejer Engh got to her feet. She appeared calm. In a clear voice she began to read out the charges: that he stood accused under the terrorism paragraph, §147a of the Norwegian Penal Code.
The Oslo public prosecution hereby judges that Anders Behring Breivik, in accordance with §39 or the Penal Code … should be transferred for mandatory psychiatric health care … for committing while in a psychotic state an act otherwise punishable by law.
In other words, the prosecution agreed with the first psychiatric report, which took the view that Breivik was sick and could be treated.
The charges continued. An act of terrorism, read Bejer Engh. An explosion. Loss of human life. Premeditated killings. Under severely aggravated circumstances.
The bomb detonated at 15.25:22 with violent explosive force and resulting pressure wave, intentionally putting a large number of people in the buildings of the government quarter or at street level in direct mortal danger, and caused massive material destruction … in the explosion he killed the following eight people …
The prosecutor read rhythmically, even expressively. All the syllables were to be enunciated, all the names were to be heard. There were no hesitations; she had practised these names. These names meant something. These people had lived. They were the most important people in this court case. They were the ones it was all about.
He was at the entrance to the Tower Block, near the van, and died instantly of massive injuries caused by the pressure wave and the impact of splinters/objects.
She was at the entrance to the Tower Block, near the van, and died instantly of massive injuries caused by the pressure wave and the impact of splinters/objects.
There was only a pronoun to distinguish between the accounts of the two lawyers’ fates. They were there, precisely there, in the worst place imaginable, when the bomb exploded. They were born in 1979 and 1977.
The public prosecutor took a sip of water. The glass beside her was continually emptied and refilled. Apart from a stifled sob after some of the names, the room was silent. Nobody cried openly. The bereaved put their hands over their mouths so as not to make a noise. They lowered their heads so as not to be seen.
The public prosecutor came to Utøya.
He was in front of the café building.
He was at the campsite.
He was in the small hall.
She was in the main hall.
She was on Lovers’ Path.
He was in the wood east of the schoolhouse.
She was at Stoltenberget.
She was at Bolsjevika.
He was at the pumping station.
She was on the shoreline at the southern tip.
He was found at a depth of six metres.
He ran away and fell down a cliff.
All sixty-nine killed on Utøya were part of the charge.
In addition to the killings enumerated above, he attempted to kill a number of other people but was not successful in his intentions, said the prosecutor.
A reporter from a Swedish news agency murmured, almost to himself, on hea
ring for the first time where the bullets had entered: The back of the head, they were shot in the back of the head. The elderly man wrote it down in his report. At intervals of just a few seconds he sent new lines to his desk in Stockholm, where they corrected his typos, edited the text if it was too explicit, and swiftly sent it out to subscribers, TV stations and local papers all over Sweden. The man added a phrase after his first, They were shot in the back of the head. He tapped at his keys and sent some words of explanation to the subscribers – as they fled. They were shot in the back of the head, as they fled.
* * *
The accused did not look at Bejer Engh while she was reading; he kept his eyes down. But his defence lawyers had their eyes on her, listening. There was nothing else to prepare for that day. Now it was just their names and ages that were to sink in. Born in 1995, in 1993, in 1994, in 1993, in 1994, in 1993, 1996, 1992, 1997, 1996 …
Breivik had his head down. Sometimes he moved his lips, sucked them, fiddled with his pen, a special pen, soft, so he could not injure anyone with it; himself, for example.
Bejer Engh had moved on from the dead to the living.
It brought no relief. Amputations. Projectiles in the body. Injuries to internal organs. Damage to the optic nerve. Extensive tissue damage. Cerebral haemorrhage. Open fractured skull. Removal of the colon. Removal of a kidney. Projectile fragments in the chest wall. Skin transplant. Fractured eye socket. Permanent nerve damage. Shrapnel embedded in the face. Stomach, liver, left lung and heart damaged. Removal of fragments from the face. Arm amputated at the elbow. Amputation of arm and leg on the same side.
These were war injuries.
The events on Utøya generated a huge amount of fear in sections of the Norwegian population. The accused has committed extremely serious crimes on a scale not previously experienced in our country in modern times.
Bejer Engh had almost reached the end.
Breivik opted to continue looking down. He was later to call this considerate. He didn’t want to make this a worse day for the bereaved than it already was.
At half past ten, the prosecutor finished and the accused was allowed to speak. He stood up and said: ‘I admit the actions but I do not admit guilt, and I plead the principle of necessity.’
The court adjourned.
* * *
After the break, a thin-haired man took the stand. His movements were free and easy, he seemed self-assured. This was the other prosecutor, thirty-eight-year-old Svein Holden. He was to make the opening statement about the defendant’s life, and his crimes.
While the accused had sat expressionless throughout the account of his killing of seventy-seven people, he now appeared to relax. He looked round the room while the public prosecutor was going through his life.
Months of police interrogations had produced several thousand closely written pages. What was true, what was untrue, what was significant, what was unimportant, ascertaining all this was the prosecution’s task. Much of what Breivik had said had been followed up and checked, and the police had not found him to be telling overt lies.
But there were questions he answered evasively, such as those about the group to which he claimed to belong. The prosecution had concluded that the network Breivik maintained was set up in London in 2002, the Knights Templar, in which he said he was a commander, did not exist.
This was sheer fabrication.
Or was it fantasy? Delusion?
The question was, did Breivik believe it to exist?
Again, was this a madman or a political terrorist?
This was to be the central question throughout the ten weeks of the trial.
Holden argued for the former. He was of the opinion that a marked shift took place in Breivik’s life in 2006. Breivik stopped paying his subscription to the Progress Party, he closed down the company selling fake diplomas, he lost a lot of money on shares and he moved back home to his mother. He started playing computer games at all hours.
On a big screen behind the public advocates, a picture came up of Breivik’s room. This was how he had left it on 22 July, and how the police had found and sealed it later that day.
There was an open can of Red Bull on the desk. A safe on the floor. A printer. Post-it notes everywhere. Graffiti on the walls. An unmade bed.
The picture had been taken on a sunny day. Streaks of light found their way through the closed blind.
When he moved in here his life was unravelling, was the impression Holden gave. Was this when his delusions started to develop? At this time, Breivik was playing hardcore in World of Warcraft as Justiciar Andersnordic.
‘Is it a violent game?’ the judge interrupted.
‘It depends how one defines violence,’ replied Holden, and promised to come back to the question a little later.
It was after a year or two of gaming that he started to write his compendium, claimed Holden, that is to say, he authored little of it himself, but borrowed freely from what was available on blogs out there. Holden spoke at some length about the three books in the compendium, saying that he wanted to concentrate on the third, where Breivik himself was more present in what was written. This was the declaration of war, in which the reader is exhorted to join a civil war, and where notes on preparations and the instructions for making the bomb are included, Holden told the courtroom.
The relatives sat in silence, heads bowed, listening. The journalists tried to catch every word, some of them tweeting constantly. The moment Holden’s words were out of his mouth, they were on the internet.
A heavily made-up CNN reporter in the first row sat listening with her headset carefully placed over her hair. A sultry, masculine musk spread from the back rows. It was the al-Jazeera reporter, who had just come back in after a live broadcast. Yes, the world was watching today.
Some of the AUF leadership were more engrossed in their mobile phones than in what the public prosecutor was saying. It was as if they did not really want to hear this, all this about the perpetrator and his life. For them, he did not exist as a person, insane or not, even with him sitting in front of them. It had been so abrupt, so acutely painful. Now they wanted to move on. They wanted to get away. Away from him. Nor did the AUF have any official attitude on the question of his soundness of mind; it was nothing to do with them, the constitutional state would have to deal with that. The crucial thing was that he must never come out. Messages were sent and received on their phones, all set to silent.
Holden started to speak about acquisitions. Weapons, equipment, chemicals for the bomb, fertiliser, uniform. The police had dressed a mannequin in the outfit the defendant had been wearing on 22 July, including the spurred boots caked in mud.
Breivik smiled when he saw a picture of the badge he had attached to the sleeve of his uniform. Multiculti Traitor Hunting Permit, it said. Valid for category A B C only.
Holden showed pictures of Vålstua farm on a bright summer’s day; he showed pictures of the Electrolux blenders, the Chinese bags. The police had established that the bomb had been made exactly as Breivik described in the manifesto. They had carried out a test detonation of the same type of bomb, and Holden again showed pictures.
Breivik followed all this attentively. He was at a seminar about himself.
‘He also made a film,’ said Holden. ‘The accused uploaded a movie trailer from the Window Movie Maker programme.’ The film comprised ninety-nine images cut together.
Sacred tones filled room 250. An iconic black and white photograph appeared on the screen; the Red Army soldier planting the Soviet flag on the Reichstag in 1945. The birth of cultural Marxism, according to the film. Image after image showed post-war Europe being taken over by Marxists. The church-style music was interspersed with electronica. Then the soundtrack changed. The quarter-tones of Arabic music streamed from the courtroom loudspeakers and a man’s voice sang a lament, amanamananah. There were pictures of veiled women, pregnant with grenades rather than babies; there were pictures of hordes of refugees on their way to Europe. The
n came hope for change, marked by large, single-word captions: strength, honour, sacrifice and martyrdom. Medieval motifs and Knights Templar were accompanied by music from the computer game Age of Conan. The finale, entitled ‘New Beginning’, depicted the ideal society. The film concluded with a single sentence: Islam will again be banished from Europe.
Breivik’s eyes had narrowed and were filled with tears. His mouth was drawn upwards towards his nose. His face flushed and he wept without shame, staring at the images as they faded out.
Until then, no one had seen him shed a single tear. Now he cried openly.
‘Are you all right?’ asked the female lawyer seated on his left, according to the lip-readers hired by Verdens Gang.
‘Yes, fine,’ replied Breivik. ‘I just wasn’t prepared for that.’
For the screening of his film. His. Film.
The court took a break.
In the hall outside, the journalists tried to find an explanation for his tears.
‘He feels great, tender, warm love for himself. When he sees his own product he is terribly moved. That is how I interpret it,’ said a psychologist to the media.
The tracks from Age of Conan were sung in old Norwegian by the singer Helene Bøksle. ‘Picture it … you hear this song as you battle to wipe out one flank of the enemy…’ he had written in Book 3. ‘That angelic voice singing to you from heaven … that voice is all you can hear as everything light turns dark and you enter the kingdom of heaven … that must really be the most fantastic way to die a glorious martyr’s death.’
For a moment, he had been a knight again.
* * *
It was half past one when the prosecutor showed a picture of the island, 500 metres long and 350 metres wide, given to the AUF as a gift in 1950.
Breivik stifled a yawn.
Holden related the course of events from the time Breivik was transported over to the island on MS Thorbjørn. When the prosecutor reached what happened at the café building, he said he was going to play one of the emergency calls that was made from there.
One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway Page 45