Anders Behring Breivik trial: day five live

14.08pm After getting hold of a mobile phone Breivik claims he tried to
phone the police but could not get through. He says he had wanted to
surrender but was unsure what to do. He describes shooting another four
people he spots hiding in steep cliffs.

14.01pm The court hears how many people on the island took refuge in a
schoolhouse. Breivik reveals how he intended to burn them out as he had
brought along cans of diesel. “The intention was to pour it over the
buildings and set fire to it, so if they didn’t come out they would just die
in the fire”, he says. But Breivik failed to find a lighter. He
continued shooting.

13.57pm He goes on to detail some of the equipment he carried with him.
Includes ammunition, a camelback rucksack to avoid dehydration and smoke
grenades.

13.54pm Breivik has returned to the stand and is resuming his account.

13.36pm David Blair gives us an idea of what it is like actually
sitting in the courtroom. And the manner in which Breivik is delivering his
testimony.

QuoteThe court has now taken a brief recess. I get the impression this is
largely because Breivik’s testimony is so graphic and the events he relates
are so terrible that people in the courtroom are emotionally drained by
having to listen. I will not relate what he has just said, but I offer one
observation about the way he is saying it. Breivik talks slowly, calmly and
precisely, interjecting his account with deep sighs. The impression is that
he is talking about someone else – not himself. He is talking about another
person and the terrible things this individual was driven to carry out. He
appears to have mentally separated himself entirely from the events in
question.

13.28pm. The judge interupts. Breivik is taken away in handcuffs.

13.20pm Breivik’s testimony is now often too grim to publish. We will
avoid the worst of the detail. At one point the killer says he shouted “you
are going to die today Marxists”.

13.16pm The killer tells of walking into a nearby building and
murdering six or seven people in one room. They begged for their lives but
he executed them. His victims were often too scared to run but one tried to
escape by zig zagging his stride. Breivik says he couldn’t shoot him in the
head so he aimed at the body multiple times.

13.12pm. Breivik describes pulling the trigger for the first time. He
shot one guard so he fell and then shot him again in the head. The ferry
crew escaped on their boat. People ran in all directions.

13.10pm Norwegian journalist Trygve Sorvaag tweets on the killer:

1.08pm The level of detail coming now is upsetting stuff. Breivik’s
account is very specific. He describes being approached by a group of people
once on the island. The four included the chief security officer who Breivik
says looked very capable. He says he was almost paralysed before thinking “it’s
now or never”. He raises his pistol and fires.

1.00pm David Blair says:

QuoteBreivik was astonished that the ferry to Utoya island was unguarded. He had
expected to find some police on duty after the bomb attack in Oslo. After
all, the island was hosting a big political event. “I was dead certain
I would face a lot of opposition and I would have to fight my way through,”
he said. In the event, he was taken to Utoya on the ferry because the people
in charge were taken in by his fake police insignia.

12.47pm Breivik has just been asked to describe how events unfolded on
Utoya island. He warns that “everyone who does not want to listen
should stop listening now because the details are “horrendous“.
He starts chronologically as he arrives at the ferry peer on the mainland.
He is wearing a fake police uniform.

12.43pm Breivik reveals the last straw that caused him to carry out the
massacre. He says it was the media’s supposedly unfair treatment of the
populist Progress Party before the 2009 election. Had the media given this
party – the second largest in Norway’s parliament – a fair hearing, Breivik
claims that he may not “have lost faith in democracy and possibly I
would have fought longer by democratic means”
. Instead, he says it
provided the “confirmation I needed” that democracy would not
work.

12.40pm Our man in court writes:

For the first time, the court’s team of psyhiatrists are questioning
Breivik. He has admitted that he became completely “de-emotionalised”
during the attacks, as if he was in a “state of shock”. He
consciously adopted this mental state, with the aid of trance music and
daily meditation.

12.30pm Breivik is now being grilled by four psychiatrists. He tells
the court that from 2006 he began practicing meditation to delibrately dull
his emotions. From “happiness to sorrow, despair, hopelessness,
anxiety, fear”.

12.20pm The killer is questioned about the ages of his victims on Utoya
and asked whether it was a “manly operation”. He says “We
fight under the terms we’re under”.

12.10pm Breivik is back on the stand and the badge that he wore on the
day of the massacre is being shown to the court. It bears the English logo “Multi-culti
traitor hunting permit”. Asked what the purpose of the badge was, he
responds “I gave it to myself?” He says he “gave myself the
mandate” to kill traitors.

12.03pm This is also worth a watch before we rejoin the courtroom. The
lawyer prosecuting Breivik told a press conference at the end of yesterday’s
hearing that the “brutal courtroom statements” were affecting him.
Not an easy job.

12.01pm Ok. Looks like we’re about to resume shortly. One quick point
well worth considering before we start. Our chief foreign correspondent
David Blair, who’s in court in Oslo, says:

QuoteThe last three hours have seen the calm and controlled version of Breivik
on display. His lawyers have given him a chance to expound on all the
preparations that he made, presumably to show how rational he is. But this
sits oddly alongside Breivik’s statements that he deliberately ‘dehumanised’
himself before he killed his victims.

11.02am The judge has ordered a lunch break. Back in one hour.

10.50am Breivik is asked whether he had any links with the English
Defence League (EDL). Senior figures in the EDL have previously said the
killer had been in regular contact with its members via Facebook, and had a
“hypnotic” effect on them. But Breivik, although admitting he did contribute
to an internet forum controlled by the EDL, insists: “I have never had
contact with the EDL.”

10.38am Helen Pidd from the Guardian tweets:

10.33am

For the first time, Breivik has just addressed the crux of the issue before
the court. “I’m not a psychiatric case: I am sane,” he said. “I
understand it must be hard for a peaceful nation such as Norway when you see
an action so fundamentalist, but it’s important to see the difference
between political extremism and insanity in a clinical sense.”

10.29am Interestingly, when asked to show more empathy when giving
evidence Breivik replies by saying he will break down if he removes the
mental protection he has created for himself. When asked to look around the
courtroom and describe who he sees, he says:

10.26am

Breivik has disclosed that the difficulties with organising the attack were
so great he very nearly abandoned the whole idea. He had to revise his plan
between 20 and 30 times. “My original plan failed time after time after
time,” he said. “I almost got to the point where I was giving up
because it was so difficult.”

10.21am Breivik now tells the court that had the Oslo bomb been
successful in destroying the building completely, he would have handed
himself in straight away. Utoya would have been unnecessary.

10.12am The methodical nature of Breivik’s planning continues. He
reveals he ordered bomb fuses in December so if questioned he would be able
to claim they were needed for New Year’s Eve celebrations. He was also able
to mask his IP address to ensure his web use was anonymous.

10.08am David Blair writes:

QuoteBreivik’s defence lawyer is continuing to probe him on all the preparations
he made for his attack and all the elaborate precautions he took to avoid
detection. The aim is clearly to show how methodical and intelligent he is –
and therefore to lead the court to conclude that he is sane. Put bluntly,
the defence are trying to establish that no madman could have managed this
attack.

10.00am Breivik goes on to say that he was forced to act in isolation
out of necessity and admits the threat of being discovered by Norwegian
intelligence agencies made him hugely cautious. He says he knew his plot
would be a “lonely affair”.

9.50am The killer explains that he watched hours of documentaries to
learn about the tactics employed by al-Qaeda and other terror groups. He
says the great advantage to al-Qaeda is that they “embrace”
martyrdom. This means their attacks are far harder to prevent.

9.43am We’re back. Breivik is now talking in greater detail about his
obsession with al-Qaeda. He says he learned of and began reading an online
publication designed to radicalise young Muslims. It was from this source
that he took on board the pscyhological shock value of carrying out
multiple, near simultaneous attacks

9.23am The court retires for a 20 minute recess. Breivik’s defence
lawyer is still probing the killer on his motivation and planning for the
attacks.

9.22am

Once again, Breivik stresses the inspiration provided by al-Qaeda. The aim
of political violence is to “attract attention” and “you need
a very bloody action where the shock effect should be as big as possible”.

9.13am Breivik reveals that he considered applying for a lorry licence
so he could transport a bigger bomb to Oslo’s central government district.
He says another car was parked in the spot he had aimed to leave the vehicle
on the day of the attack, forcing him to change plans. He adds that the move
led to a 30 per cent loss in the effectiveness of the explosive.

9.03am For the first time, Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber who
detonated a truck bomb in front of a federal building in 1995, comes up in
court. The attack killed 168 people and injured more than 800. It was,
perhaps, the closest parallel to Breivik’s rampage in Oslo. Breivik tells
the courtroom how he carefully researched how McVeigh made his bomb, noting
that its principal component was a specific fertiliser.

8.54am Helen Pidd from The Guardian, who is also in court, tweets on
Breivik’s bombmaking experiments. The killer says he studied chemistry on
the internet from the autumn of 2010 and gained access to a vast volume of
data on building devices through the web too.

8.52am Breivik is asked which countries he most admires. His answer is
emphatic: “Japan and South Korea” are “role models”.
They have limited immigration and kept their cultural and ethnic
homogeneity. Hence “those two are the ideal states,” says Breivik.

8.46am David Blair writes:

QuoteAnother chilling insight into Breivik’s state of mind. He prepared for the
massacre by robbing his targets of any humanity, at least in his own mind. “I
have had a dehumanisation strategy towards those who I consider a valid
target.”

8.43am Our man in court reports that Breivik rented a farm outside of
Oslo to help prepare himself for his attack. He shunned his friends and
family by telling anyone who tried to visit him that he was too busy “working”.

8.30am The 33-year-old says he believes had “fairly normal
emotional patterns” prior to 2006 and before he began focusing on his
plans to kill. He then chose to isolate himself to “protect”
friends from what was coming.

8.28am David Blair sends this in from the hearing.

QuoteBreivik is now accusing the media of ignoring violence pepetrated by Muslim
immigrants. This is all part of plot to prevent “nationalist
conservatives” from gaining support. “The state ideology is
cultural Marxism” he said. No-one, in his view, is allowed to criticise
this.

8.20am Under questioning from his defence lawyer, Breivik begins by
explaining how “nationalist conservatives” are excluded from the
media. “You can forget about writing letters to these papers, they
won’t be printed,” he said. This all builds into his theme that
Norwegian society and the political and media elite forced him to carry out
the massacre.

8.10am Breivik has arrived in court. He’s wearing a black shirt, black
suit and a silver tie. No raised right fist salute today.

Our chief foreign correspondent David Blair has been following events in Oslo
all week and has written this
piece summing up the major delelopments from yesterday’s hearing
. Among
the more shocking revelations was Breivik’s admission that his objective “was
not to kill 69 people on Utoya island, the objective was to kill all of them.”

8.00am Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of day five of the
trial of Anders Behring Breivik, the far-Right extremist who
confessed to killing 77 people in Norway
on July 22. The day is due to start at 7am GMT (8am BST, 9am Norway). For a
reminder of those horrific events, and the aftermath the following week, our
live coverage from July is below. You can also see our coverage of day one
of the trial as it happened here,
day two here
and day three here.

Norway shootings: July 29 as it happened

Norway shootings: July 28 as it happened

Norway shootings: July 27 as it happened

Norway shootings: July 26 as it happened

Norway shootings: July 25 as it happened

Norway shootings: July 24 as it happened

Norway terrorist attacks: July 23 as it happened

Oslo explosion: July 22 as it happened

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