Hitler salute, long rambling tirade… Pleading for his release, just ten years after killing 77 people in Norway, right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik on Tuesday transformed a legal procedure a priori doomed to failure in the ideological forum, as the families of his victims feared.
In front of three magistrates sitting, for security reasons, in the gymnasium of Skien prison, where he is imprisoned, the 42-year-old extremist once again said he stood out from the violence and assured that he could not be held responsible for his attacks, citing “brainwashing” by his movement.
His words convinced neither the experts, nor the survivors of the massacre, nor the relatives of the victims, who feared that this three-day procedure, broadcast slightly delayed by certain media, would serve as a platform for him.
On July 22, 2011, Breivik detonated a bomb near the government headquarters in Oslo, killing eight people and then killing 69 others, mostly teenagers, by opening fire on a Labor Youth summer camp on the island of Utøya.
In 2012, he was sentenced to 21 years in prison with the possibility of extension, accompanied by a minimum sentence of ten years – the maximum at the time.
On Tuesday, he immediately confirmed the fears: shaved head and neat goatee, he entered the courtroom with the message “Stop your genocide against our white nations” in English on his briefcase and his dark suit, then he did a Nazi salute as the three judges arrive.
During a long speech, he then claimed to have been a mere “foot soldier” of the neo-Nazi Blood & Honor movement, to whom he attributed responsibility for the attacks, only endorsing himself that of to be left radicalized.
Giving his “word of honour” that violence, as far as he was concerned, was a thing of the past, he said he wanted to continue his fight for National Socialism peacefully, while declaring his readiness to renounce all political involvement if the Court demanded it.
“Maintaining the Illusion”
“There is no doubt that he takes responsibility for what he has done, even if he tries to distance himself,” said Tore Bjørgo, director of the Center for Research on Right-wing Extremism at the University of Oslo.
In the morning, while prosecutor Hulda Karlsdottir recited the long list of victims and the circumstances in which they had died, Breivik interrupted her, saying that “72% of them were Labor Party cadres”.
In his attempt to clear himself, sometimes disconcerting to the point of causing laughter in the audience, the extremist dissected his process of radicalization, the opportunity for him to hold an ideological discourse, rarely interrupted by the judge, where he spoken at length of “culture war” and ” white power “.
The publicity it received scandalized survivors and families. “Just because it’s ‘scandalous’ or ‘painful’ doesn’t mean I don’t think Breivik should be shown on TV,” tweeted Elin L’Estrange, a survivor of the attacks. “It’s because he is a symbol of the extreme right which has already inspired several other mass killings. His attacks have indeed inspired other attacks, including the one in Christchurch, New Zealand, which occurred in 2019, and plans for attacks around the world.
“I don’t want him to come out”
In a country that had not seen such violent crime since the Second World War, the request for parole has, in the general opinion, no chance of succeeding.
But it is seen as a test that the rule of law must overcome by treating the extremist like any other litigant.
In 2016, Breivik, who has three cells in prison, a television with DVD player and game console and a typewriter, succeeded in having the State condemned for “inhuman” and “degrading” treatment in reason for keeping him apart from the other detainees. The judgment was overturned on appeal.
The extremist’s father, Jens Breivik, who has had no contact with his son since he was a teenager, described the procedure as “absurd”. “Because Anders will not come out,” he told the German newspaper Picture. “Probably not for the next twenty years. I don’t want him to come out. »