Czech police find bomb, arrest Norway killer sympathiser

Police in the Czech Republic have arrested a man who sympathised with Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik and was likely planning a bomb attack, authorities said yesterday.

Police swooped on the 29-year-old man’s apartment in the northeast town of Ostrava on August 10 and found a large stash of weapons including an automatic weapon, a bomb and other explosive material.

“The components of the explosive device were operational,” Ostrava police chief Radovan Vojta said.

He said it was not immediately known who the man, whose name was not released, may have been targeting, adding that the investigation was in its early stages.

On July 22, 2011, Breivik set off a car bomb outside government buildings in Oslo, killing eight people, before going to an island and gunning down another 69 people, mostly teenagers.

Vojta said the suspect was believed to have sympathised with Breivik because he was using his name online.

A quick-reaction force ar­rest­ed him at his apartment after about 80 building residents were evacuated.

The suspect has been convicted of several past offences, and was handed a six-month suspended sentence in 2010 for exploding a homemade bomb at an Ostrava pumping station.

Neigbours told the CTK news agency that the man was not a right-wing extremist but was mentally unhinged.