OSLO, Norway – To Anders Behring Breivik, the Norway explosion and shootings that killed at least 93 people were a “marketing method” for his manifesto, which not only lays out his extreme nationalist philosophy but reveals his attack methods and encourages like-thinkers to do their own mass killing.
Breivik describes how he bought armor, guns, tons of fertilizer and other bomb components, and stashed caches of weapons — all while evading police suspicion and being nice to his neighbors.
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In discussing how and where to order bomb components, he said “there is absolutely NO GOOD REASON why anyone (unless flagged by the intelligence agency) shouldn’t be able to acquire the above materials.”
“Any single patriot who wants to establish a cell and begin action can do so, and thus becomes a part of the organisation,” he wrote.
Friday’s bombing at government headquarters in Oslo, which killed at least seven, and the shootings, which killed at least 86 at a ruling-party island retreat for young people, have rattled Norway, home to the Nobel Peace Prize and where the average policeman patrols without a firearm.
More than 90 people were wounded, and others remain missing at both crime scenes.
Authorities revealed Sunday that one of the attacker’s first victims on the island was an off-duty police officer who had been hired by the camp directors to provide private security in his spare time.
That detail sheds new light on the confusion many survivors described during the 90-minute massacre. The attacker arrived dressed as a policeman, and some were killed when they approached the killer thinking he was there to save them.
Dr. Colin Poole, head of surgery at Ringriket Hospital in Honefoss northwest of Oslo, said the gunman used special bullets designed to disintegrate inside the body and cause maximum internal damage. Poole said surgeons treating 16 gunshot victims have recovered no full bullets.
“These bullets more or less exploded inside the body,” Poole said. “It’s caused us all kinds of extra problems in dealing with the wounds they cause, with very strange trajectories.”
Ballistics experts say the so-called “dum-dum” bullets also are lighter in weight and can be fired with greater accuracy over varying distances.
Breivik has been charged with terrorism and will be arraigned today. His attorney, Geir Lippestad, said Sunday that his client asked for an open court hearing “because he wants to explain himself.” It was unclear whether a judge would allow the media to cover the hearing.
“He wanted a change in society and, from his perspective, he needed to force through a revolution,” Lippestad told public broadcaster NRK. “He wished to attack society and the structure of society.”
Lippestad said his client wrote the 1,500-page manifesto alone — though a reading shows that parts were lifted from the writings of U.S. “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski. It’s part anti-immigrant rant, part diary and part prediction of a judgment day.
Beirvik pilloried what he called the political correctness of liberals and warned that their work would end in the colonization of Europe by Muslims. Europeans who might sympathize with his ideas, meanwhile, have been brainwashed into a fear of nationalism, he wrote.
“This irrational fear of nationalistic doctrines is preventing us from stopping our own national/cultural suicide as the Islamic colonization is increasing annually. This book presents the only solutions to our current problems,” he wrote.
Much like the rest of western Europe, immigration has changed the demographics of once-homogenous Norway. In the past 20 years, more than 400,000 people have migrated to the nation of about 4.7 million from non-Nordic countries as it has opened its arms to thousands of conflict refugees from Pakistan, Iraq and Somalia. Muslims make up about 1.8 percent of Norway’s population.
Breivik spent years writing the manifesto titled “2083 — A European Declaration of Independence.” It was signed “Andrew Berwick.” The document later explained that 2083 was to be the year when European government would be overthrown en masse.
“We, the free indigenous peoples of Europe, hereby declare a pre-emptive war on all cultural Marxist/multiculturalist elites of Western Europe. … We know who you are, where you live and we are coming for you,” he writes.
“We are in the process of flagging every single multculturalist traitor in Western Europe. You will be punished for your treasonous acts against Europe and Europeans.”
Breivik says he began planning his assault in 2002, when he hoped to raise enough money to create a foundation to distribute his “compendium,” as he called the document. After dabbling in stock speculation for several years, in 2006, he decided he had enough money to write the manifesto, but not enough to distribute it.
“I will need to cut my losses and proceed to plan B,” he wrote. Plan B was a mass slaughter to draw attention to his writing.
“The actual military operation is also a sub-task as well as it is a marketing method for the distribution of this compendium among other things,” he wrote.
By 2009, the compendium was complete, and Breivik started planning the attacks. He started small, setting up fake email addresses to justify an application for a fake business, Breivik Geofarm, his cover for ordering six metric tons of fertilizer — an integral component of the Oslo bomb. He rented an actual farm to carry out the final phase of his plan.
Starting May 2, he gave a daily blow-by-blow of his activities, mostly building his bomb at the farm. One of the owners of the farm nearly caught him in the act in a spontaneous visit to the farm but he persuaded her to return another day.
He advises how to avoid detection, telling his readers to cultivate good will with neighbors and offer visitors coffee and sandwiches as long as doing so doesn’t “jeopardize the operation.”
Finally, on the day of the attack, he wrote about his plan for “initiate blasting sequenses at pre-determined sites,” but did not mention the island shooting that killed the most people.
Although earlier he had called the attacks a martyrdom operation and imagined his trial if he were to survive gunshot wounds, in his last entries, he makes no mention of being killed or captured. Instead, he worries how he will pay off the debts he has acquired over the years of planning.
Then he signs off: “I believe this will be my last entry. It is now Fri July 22nd, 12.51.”
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