Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
In 2011, terrorist Anders Breivick embarked on a killing spree, setting off a car bomb in front of the Norwegian Prime Minister’s Office, which killed 8 and later in the day made his way to an island where a youth summer camp was under way. He killed 77 people and injured 319. He was dressed as a police officer and began shooting people at random. He shot countless numbers of youths and ended up killing 69 people using a mini 14 semi automatic assault rifle and a glock semi automatic pistol.
And with in the question ; why had Brevik waged a three and a half hour war on his own innocent countrymen ?
And committed history´s deadliest killling spree
“who did this? who is behind this ,where did the hatred come from?”
A scandinavian admired for its landscape, high living standards and for having one of the lowest murder rates in the world.
In the capital city of Oslo , the day had begun like any other.
22nd of july it´s in the middle of the main holiday in Norway and of course the weather was pretty bad as i t always is . but it still summer so most of the people were actually at hollyday , pretty normal summer´s day in Norway .
It was quite a busy friday people were all looking forward to the weekend.
At 3:18 p.m .a white van is captured on CCTV,parking nect to norway´s government headquarters.
it´s driver is 32 anders breivik and cameras record him leaving the scene armed and dressed in police style uniform.
Minutes later at 3:26 p.m the country will be changed forever as the worlds worst killing spree began.
suddenly there was just like a pressure wave, big pressure wave that just kind of felt blue through the building , there was debris and duist everywhere in the air.
the massive deadly blast killing eighy , transformed Oslo from from tranquil to terrifying
People thought it was a truck that run into the building or an earthquake, every people just froze, they didn´t know what to do.there were people laying on the street,
it was qiuet . only the fire alarm inside the buildings could be heard.
authorities beginning to arrive. the scale of he task facing them quickly became apparent .
It was vacation ,it was the summer afternoon ,most of the people were not at work so most of the offices were empty.
the doors the walls ,everything swas smashed in so you couldn´t see that it s has been an office.
people were resally scared in town ,for mor bombs or for who did it .
The
white van parked outside the government buildings had been packed with almost a ton of fertilizer based explosives,it´s detonation had left 8 dead and more than 80 injured
Norways´s capital city of Oslo had been devastaded by a massive car bomb.
it was a day anders breivik had been preparing fot months and the bombinh was merely the beginning of his killing spree.
the 13th February 1979 ,Oslo
Anders Brevik is born to a diplomat and a nurse,his childhood was marked by the divorce of his parents and worrying behavior that would draw the attention of the authorities at a very young age.
He was under observation by child psychiatrist when he was at the age of three or four years old and they all gave him a quite serious diagnosis, at age of four breivik was assessed by psychologists because they became quite concerned about the home life his mother was bringing him up, they thought that he´d been sexualized in some way and that his mother was projecting her own ideas onto him that weren´t appropriate for a four-year -old boy.
The family unit would quickly begin to dissolve leaving anders in the care of his increasingly unstable mother and isolated from his father.
Breiviks father is present mostly in form of his absence.He was not there for breivik. He certainly didn´t have much , of a family to live with . he was of a neurotic background,he was an individual who was prone to outbursts or dramatic scenes and shows of largesse
As the dust began to settle in Oslo City centre the investigaton had begun into hwo could be behind the the atrocity.
It was a violent and surreal picture, this is not what you expects to see in Oslo , not in Norway and not in Scandinavia.
Oslo was completely unprepared for something like this and very much taken with their pants down.
One of the interesting things about breivik spree of course ,is that he bought himself extra time for a while the police are only taken calls about the bombing and nothing else.
There was little information available in the early phase, but after a while police discovered people had called in to report different movements.
Pictures coming through to the police control room, would offer the first crucial clues in their hunt of the perpetrator..
police would hear where the perpetrator had been. which car was parked outside whitch had then exploded.
The registration number , sot that this was sent to those managing the research at the Police HQ
But the culprit was already one step ahead of the authorities and what he had planned next would dwarf the carnage in the city and shocked the entire world.
Breivik was driving out of town when his bomb exploded. and he enjoyed the deception, he was absolutely relishing the artistry of what he was doing.
He was driving for about 40 minutes until he came to the nearby lake. with confusion and tensions mounting across the country breivik would begin to execute the second stage of his plan. the island of Utøya was hosting was hosting a summer camp of young labour party activists . and breivik was headed straight for them
And he parked his car on the ferry crossings over to Utøya and he presented himself as security police officer ,there to instruct them about security meassures that needed to be taken in the light of the explosion that just happened in Oslo.
And they sent the ferry to collect him, what would come next would be an act so sinister, it would strip a generation of its innocence.
located 50 minutes outside of Oslo, the picturesque island of Utøya is famed for its outstanding natural beauty.
Utøya is actually like a whole Norway,just placed within a couple of thousand square feet.
playing host to the annual summer camp for the youth division of the labour party ,Utøya seemed a perfectly formed paradise.
From air it looks like a heart just dropped into the ocean
But this island idol would soon be transformed into a nightmarish vision of violance
by anders breivik.
people were playing football ,volleyball,everything was just normal perfect.
No one could have imagined that the man behind the bombing in Oslo had his sights set on the island of the Utøya
Anders breiviks position as an outsider had been defined at an early age. he grew up in a very affluent part of town. aged just 14 ,he had sought acceptance by joining nationalist gang ,but his natural demeanour set him apart from the other gang members.
however there wass one aspect of youth culture that that breivik did excel.One which demonstrated his ability to prepare and execute a plan in extreme detail.
He would salso try to establish a reputation as a grafiti artist, so he was apparently according to people he met at a time planning his graffiti raids like a general. extremely good with the logistics getting the number of cans and planning his missions.
He was definitely searching to get some recognition to be someone.
As it happened all the time with him ,he worked very hard for recognition but he ended up being rejected by also by this people .
Breivik has certainly made reference to being isolated when he was younger and in his teens ,but he also showed adept skills at beloning when he needed to. so allthough he postures himself as being the outsiders outsider as a narcissist he´s also very capable of working on the inside when he needs to.
such capabilities would prove crucial in carrying out the second stage of a killing spree that has already eight dead.
At 5:17 p.m. on the 22nd of july 2011 ,the ferry arrived at the island of Utøya.
Disguised as a police officer and claiming an obligation to keep Utøya´s inhabitants safe from harm ,breivik was welcomed.
They sent the ferry over , and they carried his big suitcase with his ammunition.
At 5:21 the first shiots were fired .beginning what would be over an hour of uinimaginable horror.
The first thing he did was to go and ask for the guardsmen of the island to come with him and the women who was the head of the camp and then he drew his pistol and shot them both in the head
Utøya survivor:i could see people running and him shooting and i could see three people fall just right here.
At 5.23 anders breivik approched the cafeteria a building busy with youngsters.
Utøya survivor#2 :i saw many people that were running outside and i called to them. because there were no reason to run, like they were doing and one of them told me that´s a guy were shooting them and took it serious because he had very stressed voice but i also thought it was a joke.
Utøya survivor#1 : i thought maybe this one was an act , i thought this day has been already so absurd it couldn´t get any worse
Utøya survivor#2 :i run outside of the building and then they were people that were lying ioutside that were killed and then …that wass the moment that i understood this was for real.
As confusion spread amongst the campus ,breivik maintained a menacing calm, his singular purpose the intention to kill .
Utøya survivor#1 :”There was this girl approching him from a distance looked like a policeman and this man walked normally with speed towards this girl and this girl was just walking normally towards him.
he pulls up his gun that he held in his hand down by his taies, he points it up at this girl,she stops and slowly started walking backwards, he continues with the same speed towards her . and a series rounds goes off and he shoots her down into the ground .
there were around 500 young people gathered around the cafeteria and and the campsite.
Utøya survivor#1 : ” it was like nothing , not even a single leaf or straw grass moved , everything just stood completely still and at the same time that girl hit the ground it seemed like the ground just lifted itself up and started running away and that was all the people running
At 5:31 breivik began working his way through the campsite towards the woods. the gunman had already shot and killed 21 .as he made his way through the woods towards the southern tip of the island ,he would take 15 more lives .
Rumors of the atrocities unfolding on Utøya began to circulate across Norway.
Journalist marius anderson would be dispatch in a helicopter to investigate.
marius told the pilot to start circling the island.
Marius:i need a overview , i need overview pictures , i need to understand what´s going on. because i had no idea.
for many on the island the only option was to swim for their lives
marius: i started seeing people in the water and the strange thing about your mind is that you dont expect people to be swimming away from an island like scared.this was a summer camp in my head and my head told me ” ah, they´re taking a swim ” and it takes like second and you´re know ,they´re not swimming, they ´re not bathing. they´re swimming away from the island.
Utøya survivor#1 : i couldn´t breath so after 50 maybe 100 meter i turned back i realized this was going to be too far and i also realized that i was probably going to drown.
marius: at that time we started to realize that this is aa process that that goes over time because it doesn´t really add up.your head doesn´t really want to believe it , you think it´s reported shooting it might be someone playing with fireworks on one side of the scale. on the other side of the scale it might be a mass murderer.but that´s highly unlikely.
Utøya survivor#1 : suddenly the same man that i saw earlier comes out ofthe woods just right next to me , eight maybe ten meters away and started screaming that….umh …that ” i´m going to kill you.then you must all die today.”
At 3.26 p.m. on the 22nd of july 2011 ,the Norwegian capital of Oslo was devastated by a massive car bomb.eight would die and more than 80 would be injured.
Nearly two hours later a new horror had begun 25 miles away .
When a gunman began running amuck on Utøya,
a small island packed with young people attending a left -wing labour party camp.
jorunalist marius anderson was in a helicopter above the island but was as confused as the people on the ground.
marius:at that point we had no idea if there was 15 people shooting, one person shooting.we didn´t know that there was one guy dressed as a cop.but i remember i saw a big tall character which i then thought “okej, that might be a police .”
the gunman dressed as a police officer was 32 year old anders breivik and he had already taken the lives of 36 people on the island.
at 5: 40 p.m. he began shooting at the youngsters in the water.
Utøya survivor#1 :he started shooting into the water after the people that was swiming sand when you saw the columns of the water that were rising from the bullets ,you realized “this is hapening for real.” and after he finished shooting ,he turned around towards me and aims at me,you could see into the barrel, i don´t know why i screamed but i did , but i screamed that
“no, don´t shoot me” in the blink of an eye he pulls down his riffle turns around and walks away
later breivik would claim that he hadn´t shot adrian at that moment because he looked right- wing in appearance
when he was 27 years old ,breivik hasd left his shared flat andbegan detaching himself from the world .he moved into his mother´s apartment and began immersing himself in a world of online gaming and extremist internet sites
He was isolated ,living with his mother , staying mostly in his room playing computer games almost incessantly visiting extremist websites ,he also started to behave rather oddly, He would be sometimes very angry with his mother and when she was ill he would used a face mask to avoid contamination somehow
and he would go around in the apartment dressed up in some of these uniforms that he purchased it was really props for this character he was building for himself
friends would notice a change in the anti-islamist , describing him as increasingly withdrawn and reclusive.many spree killers have undergone a period of social withdrawal and social isolation in the few monts before they actually engage in their lethal attack
It could be that while breivik was in his period of isolation he began focusing more and more on his spree as the only solution.but it could also have been a very canny way for him to go off the grid
Years later he would turn his violent gaming into reality
6:08 p.m. the 22second of july ,Utøya island. anders breivik had already taken lives of 49 people
With the police occupied by events in Oslo local residents took to the water in boats in a bid to begin a relief effort. plucking those that are chosen to swim to safety from the freezing lake.
one of those residents was local hotel worker viggo larsen.
Viggo: there must have been fifteen -twenty boats .. i think…that searched around the island in a lll directions …when i started to get close , i saw a t-shirt floating in the water so i slowly glided towards it , what i first thought was a t- shirt …but it was a person who lay on their stomach in the water and was dead.
The local police dispatched officers to the island norway´s specialist counterterrorism unit Delta force would also be called into action.
Utøya survivor#2: i called the police several times and they said they were on the way but it took more than one hour so…we were completely helpless.
around 6:10 p.m a large group of youngsters were at the pump house when a police officer arrived and informed that the culprite had been caught . as they gathered together he opened fire. It was breivik and 14 would die at that moment.
The really striking aspect about the massacre on Utøya is how calm breivik was ,how methodical he was and how carful he was.
craig jackson/criminal psychologist:One of the common misstakes that journalists and media reports make particularly in the immediate aftermath of a spree is they believe that the killer was crazed ,deranged and shooting victims at random , we certainly see time and time again in spree killers that they are focused and calm and very much in control of both their emotions and the situation .
For Adrian and those still trapped on the island the terror would continue
By 6:30 p.m ,breivik had circled the island and returned to the southern tip where he began shooting again. the moment was captured from the circling helicopter.
Utøya survivor#1 :and the first shot was so loud,before i even i opened my eyes i felt something warm next to my head . it felt like my head exploded. now i was convinced i was dead.
Adrian had been wounded in the shoulder ,five of those around him would die.
Utøya survivor#1 :from what i know ,the last bullet that wads fired was the bullet that hit me in the shoulder and still is there. he was captured one minute and 20 seconds after the last shot.
after an hour and nine minutes of unchecked bloodshed
Delta force would arrive on the shores of Utøya to face down anders breivik.
marius: the last thing that we were actually able to see was the police walking like in tactical formation ,like terrorists , like terror cops do and checking out stuff.
Then ,the man responsible for a massacre would surrender without a fight .
craig jackson/criminal psychologist: spree was certainly different from many other sprees that have gone before it , predominantly spree killers either kill themselves or they are killed by law enforcement , clearly breivik wanted to be taken alive so he could give his ideological views a platform.
Utøya survivor#2 : i was rescued by the police and they took me away and i was taken by a private boat but when we came to the hotel where everybody was gathered those that survived i immediately that the numbers of the killed will would be extremily high.
In one afternoon ander breivik had claimed lives of 77 of his countrymen . 8 in Oslo and 69 on Utøya Island . he claimed to have commited the massacre as a political act .
several months prior to the attacks ,the reclusive right-winger had moved from his mother´s Oslo flat to an isolated farm two hours north all the while he kept a diary of his preparations .
these would form a significant part of a large manifesto , one that he intended to publish.
craig jackson/criminal psychologist:he played a very savvy game of taking lots of media-friendly pictures of himself posturing with guns ,posturing in uniforms , looking wery Aryan on some occasions, showing his blue eyes ,he´s blond hair ,he saw himself being suitable for breeding almost like a stud for future generations of the Aryan race , so he´s clearly very narcissistic individual who knows how to sell the image of what he was trying to pass on.
Under the guise of becoming a vegetable farmer breivik would used his seclusion to his advantage gathering ammunition and planning his attack.This is when he researched and planned and got there with all his equipment and started manufacturing his bomb.
On the 21st july 2011 the day before his killing spree breivik completed a final recce in Oslo city centre before returning to the farm one last time.
craig jackson/criminal psychologist:breivik claimes that he spent 11 months preparing for his spree and bomb. attacks. he clearly knew what he was doing and he knew the best way to go about it. he could effectively disapear while he ordered the parts and stockpile the weapons and bomb-making equipment that he would need.
22nd july 2011.
at 2:09 p.m. breivik make his motivatios public sending out his 15,00 plus page manifesto to suppose sympathizers across europe.just over an hour later his killing spree, the deadliest in world history would begin.But what driven anders breivik to commit such an unimaginable crime.
On the 22nd of july 2011, Norway had changed forever ,anders breiviks´s attackss in Oslo and on Utøya had left an nation in mourning.
22nd of july is about those who lost their lives
In court breivik would attempt to use his trial as a platform to promote his twisted ideology
It seemed like the court was kind of theatre for him .what the whole trial was about for him was to get recognition as a political terrorist as an extremist as a militant and not to be somehow written off as crazy.
craig jackson/criminal psychologist:That picture of breivik giving the fisted salute probably did as much for his PR as his 15 hundred page manifesto did and again ,that is one of the legacies of previous murders, is that he´s been allowed to live and allow to publicize his his deranged beliefs .
Anders behring breivik would befound guilty of the murders of 77, 8 losing their lives in Oslo and 69 on the island of Utøya.
He would receive a 21 year sentence,the maximum possible under Norwegian law
A questioin that still puzzled however was what could have caused this man to commmit such chilling crimes.
johan tandberg/rescuer:to try to understand,people like this , i dont think its´posible ,it´s like trying to understand the Ted Bundy or adolf hitler.it´s impossible.
marius/ journaslist: that´s i guess the question that most of us has been asking us how can one person do this, how can you be ablte to do it as a human .
AAGE BORCHGREVINK/ author ” norwegian tragedy”: The core, the essence of the hatred of breivik stems from child abuse and was somehow refined over the years
craig jackson/criminal psychologist:breivik wasn´t mentally ill but there is evidence to suggest he was either a paranoid personality type or indeed he was more likely to be someone with a narcissistic personality disorder.
AAGE BORCHGREVINK/ author ” norwegian tragedy”: if you think about you know ,could he have been stopped earlier is that the one time he was really within the system when somehow the norwegian stte authority recognized there were something wrong was at the time when he was really young , when he was 3 or 4 old ,but the system let him go.
adrian/ Utøya survivor: he explain in court ,after a week that he remember why he spared me and he said i looked like one of his , like a lot of right-wing extremists , i didn´t look like a marxist and he thought that i should stay alive.
Although the innocence of Utøya may have been lost on 22nd of july,its beauty will remain