Breivik ‘planned to kill many more’

A Norwegian man on trial for killing 77 people last July has said that his original plans included decapitating the country’s former prime minister, bombing a royal palace, and killing the entire government.

Anders Behring Breivik, giving testimony on the fourth day of his trial in Oslo on Thursday, also told the court that he trained himself using a computer wargame to help plan the attacks.

Breivik killed eight people in a car bombing outside the ruling Labour Party’s headquarters in Oslo and then shot dead 69 people on the island of Utoeya, where the party was holding a youth summer camp.

“The aim of the attack on the government buildings … was to kill the entire Norwegian government, including the PM … and everyone in the building,” Breivik told the court. Jens Stoltenberg, the current Norwegian prime minister, was not at the offices on the day of the attack.

He also described how he planned to kill everybody on Utoeya, culminating in the filmed beheading of former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.

Al Jazeera’s Paul Brennan, reporting from Oslo, said Breivik had told the court how he started playing wargames for up to 16 hours a day after moving in with his mother in 2006.

“Breivik was taken through his preparations … He said that his plan was to go to Utoeya Island and he knew that the former prime minister of Norway [Brundtland] would be there,” said Brennan.

“He wanted to first of all subdue her with plastic handcuffs and decapitate her while filming the whole thing. And then he was going to upload it up to the internet.”

‘I wanted to kill them all’

Our correspondent said that Breivik also said he intended to kill everyone on Utoeya by driving them all into the water in order to save ammunition. There were 564 people on the island on the day of Breivik’s attack.

“I wanted to kill them all,” said Breivik, as relatives of the vicitims inside the courtroom wept.

Brennan described Breivik as “utterly remorseless…and emotionless.”

He did, however, drop his habitual far-right salute following demands from survivors and relatives of the victims. 

Breivik had been making a clenched-fist salute at the beginning of each day of the trial since Monday, touching his chest and extending his clenched right fist in front of him.

“We have discussed it with him,” Breivik’s main lawyer, Geir Lippestad, told reporters on Wednesday evening, adding: “We hope he won’t do it.”

Breivik has acknowleged carrying out the attacks, but denies criminal guilt, saying that he was acting in self-defence to resist multiculturalism and a “Muslim invasion of Europe”.

He says he belongs to a far-right network called the “Knights Templar”, although prosecutors question whether the group exists.

Breivik has demanded to be executed or acquitted for Norway’s worst massacre since World War II. 

“There are only two just outcomes to this case – acquittal or the death penalty,” the 33-year-old said, calling the prospect of a prison sentence “pathetic”.

Norway has no death penalty and formal sentencing cannot exceed 21 years, though Breivik could be held for the rest of his life if he is judged to pose a continuing danger.

He could also be committed indefinitely to a mental institution if he is deemed to be insane.