NORWAY-ATTACK/BREIVIK-FILE Four years on, Norway remembers killing rampage that left 77 dead

Record ID: 149298

  • Title: NORWAY-ATTACK/BREIVIK-FILE Four years on, Norway remembers killing rampage that left 77 dead
  • Date: 22nd July 2015
  • Summary: OSLO, NORWAY (FILE - JULY 22, 2011) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF BOMBED GOVERNMENT BUILDING PEOPLE RUNNING RESCUE WORKERS PUTTING PERSON ON STRETCHER / DAMAGED BUILDING
  • Embargoed: 6th August 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Norway
  • Country: Norway
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA7QZYQ5LFJFDY3RZN7ZCYEPKP0
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb in central Oslo, killing eight people, then took a boat to an island where the then-ruling Labour Party were holding a summer camp and shot dead 69 more people, mostly teenagers.
    It was the worst massacre Norway had seen since World War Two.
    Breivik, a right-wing anti-Muslim radical who accused the then-ruling Labour Party of allowing too much immigration, is serving a 21-year prison term, Norway's maximum sentence. It can be extended if he is judged to be a threat at the end.
    Earlier this month, Breivik, now 36, launched legal action accusing the Norwegian state of violating his human rights by keeping him in strict isolation in prison four years after he massacred 77 people.
    The legal papers, filed with Oslo's main court and referring to the European Convention on Human Rights, were aimed at forcing Oslo to grant Breivik more access to other people and limit censorship of his letters.
    "He has a very extreme degree of isolation," Breivik's lawyer Oeystein Storrvik told Reuters, saying contact with other people was mainly with guards and health personnel.
    "We mean that he has a right to have contact with other people," he said, perhaps including other prisoners despite risks that they might attack him. It will be up to the court to decide whether to allow his case to be heard.
    In the capital, a planned exhibition about the killings is angering some Norwegians, who fear it will turn into a "hall of fame" for Breivik.
    The exhibition, opening this week in the government building in central Oslo where Breivik killed his first eight victims four years ago, will include his fake police identity card and bits of the mangled van in which he planted a bomb.
    Norway's Conservative-led government says the information centre, likely to last five years, has been planned in consultation with some survivors and relatives to help the Nordic nation come to terms with the attacks.
    But many want to forget Breivik.
    "It's regrettable that the attacker is getting the attention he always sought," Tor Oestboe, whose wife was among those killed in Oslo, told Reuters.
    He said he saw a need for information but feared the exhibition and inclusion of personal items would provide a "hall of fame" for Breivik.
    "July 22 is an open wound and it hurts, and I understand that it will be hard for many people to visit this exhibition," Minister of Local Government and Modernisation Jan Tore Sanner told Reuters.
    "We cannot and should not forget this story. Knowledge is the most important instrument against hate, violence and extremism," he said, adding the attacks would be part of the education of children and future generations.
  • Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register