The trial of “lone wolf” gunman, bomber and mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik started today in Oslo, Norway. Breivik killed 77 people last summer, using first a car bomb placed in the government quarter, and then firearms at a youth camp to massacre innocent children and young people, in order to further his political cause.
Breivik has decided to plead not guilty, saying he did what he did in self defense, protecting the Norwegian sovereign state from Islamists. During the preliminary presentation of evidence, even seasoned newsmen stated they were considering leaving the court, due to the gruesome details of his actions.
Breivik killed 69 people at a Labour Party youth camp on Utoeya island, having first set off a bomb outside a government building in Oslo that killed eight people.
Breivikwas almost certainly a “lone wolf”, even though he has repeatedly claimed to be only a cell in a greater network. His sanity will be on trial as well, since two separate evaluations of his psyche have come up with contradictory conclusions. One says he is psychotic and paranoid schizophrenic, and one says he’s just about as sane as can be.
Breivik is released from handcuffs at the start of trial day.
Tackling, not to mention preventing, such an attack has been a hot topic in Norway this last year, and both regular police and intelligence services have said that picking up on his behavior in time to stop him would have been nigh on impossible for anyone. When all is said and done, it is easy to pinpoint where things went wrong, and backtracing finances, spending, purchases and movements is far easier than picking up on abnormalities while they unfold, Breivik has been calculating and devious, planning his actions for a long time and setting up his financial means and purchases in a very clever way. In the end, it is clear that only luck could have come in his way, e.g. by way of an accident while he was driving his home made bomb or a chance encounter with a police patrol.
“He has killed 77 people, he tried to kill several more, and he has ruined our lives and that is what he stands trial for and that is what is most important for us.”
In a society that has, up until last summer, avoided radicalism, mostly, been spared of terrorism and which has a well developed democratic system, this kind of attack by a native Norwegian has been unthinkable. Breivik was not a risk, he had never been in the legal system, he was not in any crosshairs of any kind, and in a free society, a free country, that kind of individual has a lot of leeway before the searchlights land on him, or her.
So what went wrong? In a word, nothing. Everyone, seemingly, did everything right in the months, days, hours and minutes leading up to the bombing, which was the first event. Even the guards at the government buildings did things by their book, reporting and investigating who the car outside belonged to, left in a spot frequently used by delivery vehicles (Breivik had a large, white van of a make favored by delivery companies). Before any action could be taken, however, the car exploded, and the Devil came to Norway.
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