Anders Behring Breivik said yesterday he should be executed if found guilty of last year’s mass killings in Norway, telling his trial that other lone extremists were plotting to emulate his attacks.

I am not the only one. If our demands are not met, this will happen again and again

On day three of his trial, Mr Breivik, who stands accused of committing “acts of terror”, acknowledged it was unrealistic to expect the death sentence in a country which does not allow capital punishment.

But he derided the 21-year maximum prison sentence allowed in Norway in the event of his conviction for the killing of 77 people last year as “pathetic”.

There are only two “legitimate outcomes of this case: acquittal or the death penalty,” Mr Breivik said.

“I embrace death. I looked at the action on July 22 as a suicide mission,” Mr Breivik told the district court in Oslo. “I did not expect to survive.”

Mr Breivik, now aged 33, first killed eight people last July when he set off a bomb in a van parked outside buildings housing the offices of Labour Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who was not present at the time.

He then travelled to Utoeya island where, dressed as a police officer, he spent more than an hour methodically shooting at hundreds of people attending a Labour Party youth summer camp. The shooting spree claimed 69 lives, mostly teens trapped on the small island surrounded by icy waters. It was the deadliest massacre ever committed by a lone gunman.

Mr Breivik entered a plea of not guilty at the start of his trial, saying his acts were “cruel but necessary”.

But if the court deems him sane, Mr Breivik faces a 21-year jail term, which could then be extended indefinitely if he is still considered a threat to society. If found insane he could be sentenced to closed psychiatric care, possibly for life.

“I consider 21 years prison a pathetic punishment,” he said, adding that he thought it a shame that one of the trial judges had been dismissed on Tuesday for having called for him to receive the death penalty the day after the attacks.

Two psychiatric evaluations have drawn contradictory conclusions on Mr Breivik’s sanity, and ultimately it will be up to the judges to rule on the issue when they deliver their verdict sometime in mid-July.

During his cross-examination, Mr Breivik, who is intent on proving his sanity so as to lend credence to his Islamophobic and “militant nationalist” ideology, told prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh that there were currently two other one-man cells in Norway “planning attacks” and who could strike at any time.

“I am only one of many militant nationalists... The important thing is that I am not the only one and if our demands are not met – if the Labour party does not stop deconstructing Norwegian culture – this will happen again and again,” he said.