Appeal hearing: Terrorist Breivik refuses to assume responsibility for the July 22 killings

Photo: Ole Berg-Rusten / NTB / POOL

Terrorist Anders Behring Breivik tried to convince Telemark District Court that he would no longer resort to violence if he were to be released. He expressed no remorse for the killings on July 22, 2011.

Breivik said that he was radicalized when he carried out the terrorist attacks in 2011. He blamed the killings on the neo-Nazi group Blood and Honor.

“I will never carry out a militant action again. The person I was ten years ago no longer exists,” Breivik said.

From the start of the trial, Breivik showed that – ten years after the terrorist attacks that shook the whole world – he still supported the ideas of ​​race theory and white power. 

“War criminal”

In a personal statement to judge Dag Bjørvik, the 42-year-old terrorist, who has now been in solitary confinement for ten years, offered several alternative solutions on how he could be released from prison.

“I’m a war criminal. I think it is impossible for me to live anywhere else in Norway than on Svalbard. Even there, it would be problematic,” Breivik said.

He had previously offered to be deprived of Norwegian citizenship, be deported from Norway, or be placed under house arrest.

However, he made it a condition that the court and the prosecuting authority order him to give up his political ambition. According to Breivik, that is the only way he could be “released” from his affiliation with the far-right group he belongs to.

“Cultural war”

When prosecutor Hulda Karlsdottir referred to the reasons why Breivik was in preventive detention, and read out the injuries and causes of death for each individual victim of the terror, there was no visible reaction from Breivik – other than the fact that he tried to reprimand the public prosecutor for omitting information to the judge.

Breivik used large parts of his testimony to describe his worldview and concepts such as cultural war, historical lines that stretch several thousand years back in time, and the white power movement. He stressed that he will, in any case, spend the rest of his life working to promote his views, even if he distances himself from the violence.

When Karlsdottir asked Breivik to reveal who ordered him to carry out the massacres, he explained that he had been radicalized by descendants of German SS soldiers who had established a decentralized militant terrorist network after World War II.

“It was not me”

Breivik says that what he explained after the attack that he was a knight in the Knights Templar was a cover to defend the neo-Nazi group Blood and Honor.

“I received an order from the collective to re-establish the Third Reich; it was no (specific) individual,” said Breivik, who stated that he no longer had control over himself when he carried out the terrorist acts on July 22.

“Do you regret it?” the prosecutor asked Breivik.

“I did not carry out (the) July 22 (attacks). It was not me. I was a soldier and (I was) radicalized. It is Blood and Honor that bears the full responsibility,” Breivik replied.

He says he is still a member of the organization.

“Blood and Honor does not know that I am a member. They found out today, because of you, who have been holding me in isolation for ten years. It’s not my fault,” Breivik said towards the end of the prosecutor’s interrogation.

In the following days, the Telemark District Court will assess Breivik’s request for parole. The state prosecutor will seek to place Behring in preventive detention indefinitely. 

The parole hearing is due to last three days, but the verdict will not be announced for several weeks.

Source : NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews

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