Norway buries first victims as police question gunman
Death toll from last week’s massacre rises to 77
Norway yesterday buried the first victims of the twin attacks exactly one week ago while police began questioning the killer for a second time.
As Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg prepared to lead a national commemoration ceremony in Oslo, an 18-year-old woman, Bano Rashid, shot dead during the gunman’s rampage on the island of Utoeya was laid to rest in a town outside the capital.
Flags flew at half-mast across the country of five million, including at the suspect’s high-security prison, as formal grieving began for those killed in the July 22 twin gun and bomb attacks.
The killer, Anders Behring Breivik, was brought to police headquarters in an armoured car early yesterday from Ila high security prison where he is being held in solitary confinement. The windows were covered to prevent photographers seeing inside.
Police said that Mr Behring Breivik would be questioned about information that had come to light over the past few days but would not say what it was.
The 32-year-old admitted carrying out the attacks during questioning last Saturday, but stopped short of entering a guilty plea.
Paul Ray, the 35-year-old leader of a Knights Templar movement inspired by mediaeval crusaders against Islam, runs a “Richard the Lionhearted” blog believed to have underpinned Mr Behring Breivik’s manifesto, but told The Times of London: “I could never use what he has done to further my own beliefs.”
Norway’s intelligence services chief Janne Kristiansen said the likelihood that the killer had acted as a “lone wolf” could make it more difficult for police to uncover his trail.
The gunman’s 76-year-old father Jens Breivik, who lives in the south of France, said in an interview published yesterday that he “does not want to talk any more about my son” whom he labelled “a terrorist”.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the twin attacks rose to 77 yesterday, after police released a new list of the names of the victims.