Norway horror: 80 die in camp shooting, 7 in blast
Associated Press Posted: Saturday, July 23, 2011 1:15 am | Updated: 2:00 am, Sat Jul 23, 2011
A Norwegian who dressed as a police officer to gun down summer campers killed at least 80 people at an island retreat, horrified police said early Saturday. It took investigators several hours to begin to realize the full scope of Friday's massacre, which followed an explosion in nearby Oslo that killed seven and that police say was set off by the same suspect.
The mass shootings are among the worst in history. With the blast outside the prime minister's office, they formed the deadliest day of terror in Western Europe since the 2004 Madrid train bombings killed 191.
Police initially said about 10 were killed at the forested camp on the island of Utoya, but some survivors said they thought the toll was much higher. Police director Oystein Maeland told reporters early Saturday they had discovered many more victims.
"It's taken time to search the area. What we know now is that we can say that there are at least 80 killed at Utoya," Maeland said. "It goes without saying that this gives dimensions to this incident that are exceptional."
Maeland said the death toll could rise even more. He said others were severely wounded, but police didn't know how many were hurt.
A suspect in the shootings and the Oslo explosion was arrested. Though police did not release his name, Norwegian national broadcaster NRK identified him as 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik and said police searched his Oslo apartment overnight. NRK and other Norwegian media posted pictures of the blond, blue-eyed Norwegian.
National police chief Sveinung Sponheim told NRK that the suspected gunman's Internet postings "suggest that he has some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views, but whether that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen."
A police official said the suspect appears to have acted alone in both attacks, and that "it seems like this is not linked to any international terrorist organizations at all." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because that information had not been officially released by Norway's police.
"It seems it's not Islamic-terror related," the official said. "This seems like a madman's work."
The official said the attack "is probably more Norway's Oklahoma City than it is Norway's World Trade Center." Domestic terrorists carried out the 1995 attack on a federal building in Oklahoma City, while foreign terrorists were responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
The official added, however, "it's still just hours since the incident happened. And the investigation is going on with all available resources."
The motive was unknown, but both attacks were in areas connected to the left-leaning Labor Party, which leads a coalition government. The youth camp, about 20 miles (35 kilometers) northwest of Oslo, is organized by the party's youth wing, and the prime minister had been scheduled to speak there Saturday.
A 15-year-old camper named Elise said she heard gunshots, but then saw a police officer and thought she was safe. Then he started shooting people right before her eyes.
"I saw many dead people," said Elise, whose father, Vidar Myhre, didn't want her to disclose her last name. "He first shot people on the island. Afterward he started shooting people in the water."
Elise said she hid behind the same rock that the killer was standing on. "I could hear his breathing from the top of the rock," she said.
She said it was impossible to say how many minutes passed while she was waiting for him to stop.
At a hotel in the village of Sundvollen, where survivors of the shooting were taken, 21-year-old Dana Berzingi wore pants stained with blood. He said the fake police officer ordered people to come closer, then pulled weapons and ammunition from a bag and started shooting.
Several victims "had pretended as if they were dead to survive," Berzingi said. But after shooting the victims with one gun, the gunman shot them again in the head with a shotgun, he said.
"I lost several friends," said Berzingi, who used the cell phone of one of those friends to call police.
The blast in Oslo, Norway's capital and the city where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, left a square covered in twisted metal, shattered glass and documents expelled from surrounding buildings. Most of the windows in the 20-floor high-rise where Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his administration work were shattered. Other buildings damaged house government offices and the headquarters of some of Norway's leading newspapers.
The dust-fogged scene after the blast reminded one visitor from New York of Sept. 11.
Ian Dutton, who was in a nearby hotel, said people "just covered in rubble" were walking through "a fog of debris."
"It wasn't any sort of a panic," he said, "It was really just people in disbelief and shock, especially in a such as safe and open country as Norway. You don't even think something like that is possible."
Police said the Oslo explosion was caused by "one or more" bombs.
The police official said the Oslo bombing occurred at 3:26 p.m. local time (1:26 p.m. GMT), and the camp shootings began one to two hours later. The official said the gunman used both automatic weapons and handguns, and that there was at least one unexploded device at the youth camp that a police bomb disposal team and military experts were working on disarming.
The suspect had only a minor criminal record, the official said.
Sponheim said seven people were killed by the blast in downtown Oslo, four of whom have been identified, and that nine or 10 people were seriously wounded.
Sponheim said a man was arrested in the shooting, and the suspect had been observed in Oslo before the explosion there. But he refused to confirm the suspect's identity as reported by Norwegian media.
Sponheim said the camp shooter "wore a sweater with a police sign on it. I can confirm that he wasn't a police employee and never has been."
Aerial images broadcast by Norway's TV2 showed members of a SWAT team dressed in black arriving at the island in boats and running up the dock. People who had stripped down to their underwear moved in the opposite direction, swimming away from the island toward the mainland, some using flotation devices.
Sponheim said police were still trying to get an overview of the camp shooting and could not say whether there was more than one shooter. He would not give any details about the identity or nationality of the suspect, who was being interrogated by police.
Oslo University Hospital said 12 people were admitted for treatment following the Utoya shooting, and 11 people were taken there from the explosion in Oslo. The hospital asked people to donate blood.
Prime Minister Stoltenberg, who was home when the blast occurred and was not harmed, visited wounded people at the hospital late Friday. Earlier he decried what he called "a cowardly attack on young innocent civilians."
"I have a message for those who attacked us," he said. "It's a message from all of Norway: You will not destroy our democracy and our commitment to a better world."
NRK showed video in Oslo of a blackened car lying on its side amid the debris. An AP reporter who was in the office of Norwegian news agency NTB said the building shook from the blast and all employees were evacuated. Down in the street, he saw one person with a bleeding leg being led away from the area.
An AP reporter headed to Utoya was turned away by police before reaching the lake that surrounds the island, as eight ambulances with sirens blaring entered the area. Police blocked off roads leading to the lake.
The United States, European Union, NATO and the U.K., all quickly condemned the bombing, which Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague called "horrific" and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen deemed a "heinous act."
"It's a reminder that the entire international community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring," President Barack Obama said.
Obama extended his condolences to Norway's people and offered U.S. assistance with the investigation. He said he remembered how warmly Norwegians treated him in Oslo when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.
Nobel Peace Prize Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said it appeared the camp attack "was intended to hurt young citizens who actively engage in our democratic and political society. But we must not be intimidated. We need to work for freedom and democracy every day."
A U.S. counterterrorism official said the United States knew of no links to terrorist groups and early indications were the attack was domestic. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was being handled by Norway.
At least two Islamist extremist groups had tried to take credit for the attacks. Many intelligence analysts said they had never heard of Helpers of Global Jihad, which took initial credit. The Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam also took credit on some jihadist websites.
Norway has been grappling with a homegrown terror plot linked to al-Qaida. Two suspects are in jail awaiting charges.
Last week, a Norwegian prosecutor filed terror charges against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he is deported from the Scandinavian country. The indictment centered on statements that Mullah Krekar _ the founder of Ansar al-Islam _ made to various news media, including American network NBC.
Terrorism has also been a concern in neighboring Denmark since an uproar over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad six years ago.
Ritter reported from Stockholm. Associated Press reporters Bjoern H. Amland in Hoenefoss, Norway, Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Matthew Lee and Rita Foley in Washington, Paisley Dodds in London, and Paul Schemm in Tripoli, Libya, contributed to this report.
STOCKHOLM -- The 32-year-old suspected of massacring at least 80 young people at a summer camp and setting off a bomb in downtown Oslo that killed at least seven is a mystery to investigators: a right-winger with anti-Muslim views but no known links to hardcore extremists.
"He just came out of nowhere," a police official told The Associated Press.
Public broadcaster NRK and several other Norwegian media identified the suspected attacker as Anders Behring Breivik, a blond and blue-eyed Norwegian who expressed right-wing and anti-Muslim views on the Internet.
Norwegian news agency NTB said Breivik legally owned several firearms and belonged to a gun club. He ran an agricultural firm growing vegetables, an enterprise that could have helped him secure large amounts of fertilizer, a potential ingredient in bombs.
But he didn't belong to any known factions in Norway's small and splintered extreme right movement, and had no criminal record except for some minor offenses, the police official told AP.
"He hasn't been on our radar, which he would have been if was active in the neo-Nazi groups in Norway," he said. "But he still could be inspired by their ideology."
He spoke on condition of anonymity because those details had not been officially released by police. He declined to name the suspect.
Neo-Nazi groups carried out a series of murders and robberies in Scandinavia in the 1990s but have since kept a low profile.
"They have a lack of leadership. We have pretty much control of those groups," the police official said.
Breivik's registered address is at a four-story apartment building in western Oslo. A police car was parked outside the brick building early Saturday, with officers protecting the entrance.
National police chief Sveinung Sponheim told public broadcaster NRK that the gunman's Internet postings "suggest that he has some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views, but whether that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen."
A Facebook page under Breivik's name was taken down late Friday. A Twitter account under his name had only one Tweet, on July 17, loosely citing English philosopher John Stuart Mill: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests."
Police where interrogating the man, first at the scene of the shooting, and later at a police station in Oslo.
"It's strange that he didn't kill himself, like the guys that have carried out school shootings," the police official told AP. "It's a good thing that he didn't because then we might get some answers pointing out his motivation."
He said the attacks appeared to be the work of a lone madman, without links to any international terrorist networks. The attack "is probably more Norway's Oklahoma City than it is Norway's World Trade Center," he said referring to the 1995 attack on a federal building in Oklahoma City by domestic terrorists.
Investigators said the Norwegian carried out both attacks -- the blast at the prime minister's office in Oslo and the shooting spree at the left-wing Labor Party's youth camp -- but didn't rule out that others were involved. But the police official said it wouldn't be impossible for one man to carry out the attacks on his own.
"He's obviously cold as ice. But to get close to the government is easy. The streets are open in that area," he said.
The Norway terror attacks? Nationalist motives may be root cause.
The bombing and shooting in Norway were quickly blamed on Islamic fundamentalists by many, but as investigators piece together the violent attacks, a Christian Nationalist looks more likely. TV2 Norway/APTN/AP
The Norwegian press say the man in custody for the terror attacks in Oslo and a nearby island today appears to have acted alone, and doesn't seem to have any links to Islamist militants.
By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / July 22, 2011
Was the perpetrator of the terror attacks that rocked Norway today a 32-year-old Christian who looks like a failed J. Crew model? If the reporting out of Norwegian outlets is right, the answer appears to be yes.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks earlier today – a car bomb at a government building that includes the offices of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, and a second gun attack on an island retreat for youth wing of the prime minister's labor party is to be believed -- there was speculation in this paper and elsewhere that Islamist militants could have been involved.
That is looking less and less likely. Norwegian news site vg.no says [ http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/artikkel.php?artid=10080610 ] that 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian national, was arrested after a killing rampage on Utoya Island, about 40 kilometers north of Oslo earlier today, according to multiple police sources. CNN reports, citing Norwegian police, that 80 people were murdered at Utoya, while seven were killed by the car bomb in Oslo.
VG.NO, the online presence of major Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang, spoke to someone identified as a childhood friend, who said that Mr. Breivik has identified himself in the past as a nationalist, and that he had posted "controversial" opinions on his Facebook page.
VG used a picture from the Facebook page of man of the same name that has posed, model-type shots of a square-jawed blond man. The VG site says [ ] that Breivik was a registered owner of a Glock handgun (which witnesses on Utoya said was used by the assailant), a rifle, and a shotgun, and that his military training did not go beyond basic national service.The Facebook profile page identifies the man's religious views as "Christian" and his political views as "conservative." He is also identified as being a fan of science fiction and crime TV shows.
The alleged assailant is also identified as holding anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant views that are common among Norway's far right. A twitter feed of a man with the same name [ http://twitter.com/#%21/AndersBBreivik ] and carrying the same picture as the Facebook page has only one tweet, left July 17 in English: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests." The quote appears to be a paraphrase of John Stuart Mill, the 19th-century English philosopher of utilitarianism and liberty.
The emerging picture that comes together from the VG article and other press is of a potential lone actor. Though constructing a car bomb alone (this one made with fertilizer, like the 1995 Oklahoma City attack in the US and many other terrorist events) isn't an easy task, it's not impossible. The Associated Press [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/police-say-oslo-blast-youth-camp-shooting-rampage-were-domestic-terror-16-dead-1-arrested/2011/07/22/gIQAbXoIUI_story.html ], reporting from Oslo, cites an unnamed police official as saying "It seems it’s not Islamic-terror related.... This seems like a madman’s work.” The AP did not name the assailant.
Earlier today, politically middle-of-the-road Norwegians were worried that if the terror attack was carried out by Muslim Norwegians, it would fuel the rise of ultranationalist and anti-immigrant feeling. While the story is still breaking, and the information flow from Norwegian authorities could shift, the question now is what impact, if any, today's events will have on the country's politics.
German National Democratic Party, Neo-Nazi Group, Changes Course In Face Of Possible Ban
In this picture taken Aug. 11, 2012 people attend a far-right summer festival for the National Democratic Party (NPD) in the village of Viereck, some 130 km (81 miles) north of Berlin, Germany. The party's leader, Holger Apfel, insists he is taking his National Democratic Party into the mainstream of German politics. Letters on the T-shirt read "Comradeship Buetzow". (AP Photo/Gero Breloer)
By FRANK JORDANS 09/04/12 07:47 AM ET
VIERECK, Germany -- At a rally of Germany's biggest far-right party, skinheads raise fists to nationalist chants and wear T-shirts that skirt the limits of German law: "Enforce National Socialism" reads one; another proclaims the wearer to be "100 percent un-kosher." Some cover illegal neo-Nazi tattoos with masking tape because police are on the prowl.
But the party's leader insists he is taking his National Democratic Party mainstream.
"My aim is to make the NPD a party firmly based in the present and looking toward the future," Holger Apfel said in an interview at the rally. Breaking a far-right taboo, he told The Associated Press that Nazi Germany's record during World War II included "crimes."
Apfel has tactical reasons for toning down his message: Authorities are currently considering a ban on the party. Yet the attempt to appeal to the center has prompted anger in the country's small but entrenched ultra-right movement, where many refuse to acknowledge that Germany under Nazism – or National Socialism – was responsible for the slaughter of 6 million Jews. Some NPD members have left; others threaten to do so.
Despite talk of change, it doesn't take long for Apfel to show his own flashes of hardcore xenophobia, which extend to seeing a threat to the "biological basis" of the German people.
"We ... have to ensure that Germany again becomes the country of the Germans," he said. "We see the growing danger that the biological basis of our people will wither away because there's an increasing mixing."
He frowned when asked his feelings about the success of Marcel Nguyen, a half-Vietnamese gymnast who won two silver medals for Germany at the 2012 Olympics.
"I can freely say it's not something that causes me euphoria," Apfel said, before hastily adding: "But you won't see us calling for the deportation of half-breed children."
Signs ordered reporters at the NPD's summer festival in Viereck not to take pictures of stalls selling extremist books, CDs and pamphlets. A large poster at the entrance to the booths compared the rising number of foreigners in Germany to the shrinking number of ethnic Germans.
The government's decision to weigh an NPD ban follows the revelation last November that a small neo-Nazi cell carried out a seven-year killing spree which left nine immigrants and a policewoman dead.
Authorities haven't been able to prove that the cell operated with direct support from the NPD. But key party officials have been linked to the group's three core members, who managed to evade police for over a decade despite being on the run for other crimes.
Angela Merkel considers the NPD "anti-democratic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and therefore also a threat to the constitution," the German chancellor's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters. But a previous attempt to outlaw the party was rebuffed by the country's top court in 2003 and officials are treading carefully before deciding later this year whether to launch a new bid to have the party banned.
Apfel's appeal to mainstream voters runs parallel to the emergence of several new German ultranationalist fringe groups on both sides of the NPD.
One calls itself "The Immortals." It has staged apparently spontaneous nighttime marches in small towns, protesting what it regards as an excessive influx of foreigners threatening the racial purity of the German nation. Chilling videos showing dozens of people wearing white masks and carrying burning torches have been uploaded to YouTube.
Despite their sophisticated online presence, The Immortals play a minor role compared to the so-called Autonomous Nationalists, according to Toralf Staud, a German journalist who has written extensively about the far right. In August, more than 900 police officers raided homes and clubhouses belonging to Autonomous Nationalist groups in western Germany. They seized computer hard drives, weapons and far-right propaganda material – including 1,000 election posters for the NPD.
A top official in Germany's most populous state said this proves that the NPD is allied with the new far-right groups.
"This shows the close links between this right-extremist party and the neo-Nazi scene in North Rhine-Westphalia," said Ralf Jaeger, the state's interior minister.
Meanwhile, the "Pro Germany" movement represents a newer strand of ultranationalism capitalizing on German fears of Islamic extremism. Some of its chapters have gained seats in local assemblies in recent years by advocating a ban on the construction of mosques. But unlike most far-right groups, Pro Germany publicly disavows anti-Semitism.
There are no reliable estimates for the number of members these new fringe groups have. Authorities estimate that they number in the several thousands, with many more who sympathize with the cause but aren't actively involved.
Kerstin Koeditz, a left-wing lawmaker, said the proliferation of extremist groups has been helped by what she described as "a new wave of xenophobia from the heart of society." Persistent high joblessness in the east, growing anti-Muslim sentiment since 9/11, and fears that a collapse of the euro could destroy the German economy have given far-right groups plenty of political talking points, she said.
Koeditz, who sits in the state parliament of Saxony for the Left Party, says far-right groups have also become more adept at evading laws in recent years. German law forbids the display of Nazi symbols and any public glorification of Adolf Hitler, so many groups host their websites abroad and use anonymous online message boards to communicate.
Another reason for Germany's inability to keep up with emerging far-right groups is an unwieldy apparatus in which dozens of different law enforcement and intelligence agencies failed to talk to each other.
Germany's security services admit that although the number of registered members of nationalist parties is declining – the NPD had 6,300 members last year compared to 6,600 in 2010 – the number of violent far-right extremists is rising. Authorities say there are 9,800 violent extremists, up 300 from 9,500 in 2010. These are people who have been involved in violence or who are linked to groups that explicitly advocate violence.
The domestic intelligence agency's annual report on extremism counted almost 17,000 far-right crimes in 2011, up slightly from the previous year. Of those, 755 were classed as violent crimes, such as attempted murder, arson or resisting arrest. The agency noted in its report that "one has to reckon with the existence and creation of right-wing terror groups as well as activities by individual right-wing terrorists."
"The vast majority of the neo-Nazi scene cooperates with the NPD or supports it regularly," the report found. It added that members of fringe groups who aid the party do so in the hope that "they will see a personal benefit from the election successes of the NPD."
The NPD receives over (EURO)1 million in government funding annually thanks to seats it holds in two state parliaments and experts say a ban on the party – with the loss of its offices – could disrupt the nationalist movement.
"But in the medium term the cadres of the NPD would continue in other organizations," said Staud.
At the party's summer rally, the evening ends with a sing-along that includes the line "I like Adolf."
Apfel, meanwhile, says he is not worried about a possible ban.
Pressed to elaborate on his comments about acknowledging Germany's past crimes – and to say whether that includes the Holocaust – Apfel pauses.
"You know very well that it's illegal to openly discuss certain issues in Germany," he said.
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