One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (50 page)

‘In return for my explanation, I want a PC with Word in prison. I want…’

He stumbled, stammering a little as if he suddenly did not know what to ask for. ‘I have to have a more formal setting before I can put forth my demands. It has to be done in the proper way.’

Eventually,
he decided he had three lists of demands. A simple one with requests that could easily be met; a second that they might also agree to – and that would actually be very attractive to the police; and then a third list that they probably would not accept.

‘Out with it then. Start with the simple one!’

‘My cell has fifteen thousand sympathisers in Norway, many of them inside the police. No one could
possibly defend such bestial acts as those I have committed today, yet Islam is more brutal than my organisation! We are martyrs, we can be monsters, that’s fine by us. Marxist youth, they’re—’

A police officer came in and interrupted. ‘The police are outside 18 Hoffsveien. Is your mother at home, and what does it say on the door?’

‘It says Wenche Behring Breivik.’

*   *   *

Wenche had been
at home when the bomb went off, and had neither heard it nor felt the pressure wave.

Earlier in the day, she’d taken a coffee break with her friends at the café and gone into the Coop to buy some mince. When she’d got home about two, Anders was back from the computer store. By half past two he was off again; there was something he had forgotten to buy.

‘I’ll have dinner ready when you get back!’
she called after him.

She chopped onion, fried it with the mince, mixed in the tomato sauce and set the table. She wanted it all ready when her son got home. She would wait to put the water on for the spaghetti until she saw him at the door. She set the sauce to one side and started peeling the prawns they would have in the evening. She put the shells in the rubbish, tied up the bag and put it
by the front door. Then she sat down and waited.

She was ravenous. Would he be back soon?

Two hours after he had gone out, she rang him. His phone was switched off. That was odd, he didn’t usually turn off his phone.

Strange that he wasn’t back yet. He’d only popped out to the computer store. Could he have dropped round to a friend’s?

At five o’clock she rang him again. No answer.

Just after
that, one of her friends rang and told her to switch on the TV. It was dreadful! She sat there watching the news and then went to put on the water for the pasta because she was so hungry. She ate a little.

At seven she rang Anders again. Where could he be? Could he have had a car accident?

It was a long time since she had had Anders at home. Since his move to the farm he had only spent one night
there, well, apart from this night. She had asked him if he had found himself a nice milkmaid up there in the valley. Straight from the cowshed!

She was glued to the TV. Imagine Anders not being there with her, when these frightful things were happening.

First the bomb. And now: ten people killed on the island.

Between eight and nine she rang his phone several times. She was starting to get
seriously worried. What could have happened? Could he have been hit by the bomb?

At 21.40, there was a call to her landline. She hurried to pick up the phone.

‘This is the police. We request that you come out.’

‘Oh no! Has something happened to Anders?’

She ran out of the flat.

Outside, she was met by flashing blue lights. There were several police cars in front of the entrance. Armed men
with black jackets and visors had their weapons trained on her.

She had to hand over her keys, and was taken to a car. A policewoman took her by the arm.

‘Your son has been arrested in connection with a serious criminal offence. You are wanted at the police station to make a witness statement.’

Wenche stared at her. This was insane.

‘Does your son have access to firearms?’ asked the policewoman.

‘He’s taken his hunting-licence test and belongs to a pistol club. He’s got a Glock and a shotgun,’ Wenche said, and added: ‘The shotgun’s in the wardrobe in his bedroom.’

The car sped through empty streets.

‘Does your son have any mental health problems?’

‘What’s he accused of?’ blurted Wenche. ‘Him of all people. He’s so kind and considerate, and…’

The car drove into the garage at the main
police station.

*   *   *

The assault force was still outside 18 Hoffsveien.

People were gaping from the windows of their flats. The whole neighbourhood was soon at the windows, phones in hand. They were all ringing each other: ‘Look outside! Look outside!’ On the television, which they all had on in the background, they would shortly see their own block live on the screen, and hear that the
perpetrator was Norwegian, and thirty-two years of age.

Good God, it must be Wenche’s Anders!

The flying squad was awaiting notification from Utøya before storming the flat.

‘Are there explosives there?’ Wenche’s son was asked.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘There’s a PC in the fart room.’

That was how he put it. It was the first room they would come to, he said, and the only one of any interest. He
had removed all his things from the loft and basement.

‘There is one thing you have to be clear about,’ he said abruptly. ‘This has been the worst day of my life. Unfortunately, it was necessary. Hopefully the Labour Party will learn its lesson from this and stop the mass import of Muslims.’

‘Will anyone else die today?’

‘I don’t want to comment on that. And I do need some more comfort in order
to formulate my list of demands.’

‘I find it rather strange that you didn’t prepare your list in advance,’ observed the lead interviewer.

‘I’m in a lot of pain now, and I can’t focus. I think a better location would help me.’

Breivik was informed that it was not currently possible to change location.

‘You all see me as a monster, don’t you?’

‘We see you as a human being.’

‘You’re going to
execute me. And all my family.’

‘We are prepared to give your family protection if need be. For us, a life is a life. You will be treated exactly the same as everybody else.’

He said he had to go for a pee, and some officers accompanied him out.

‘Now I’ve got my list of demands ready. Are you making a note of this?’ he asked when he got back.

They assured him they were.

‘I want to send and
receive letters in prison.’

‘You will, as soon as there is no longer any reason to block your correspondence and visits.’

‘How long is correspondence normally blocked for?’

‘That depends on the investigation, and it is hard to say in a murder case.’

‘Murder case? This wasn’t murder, it was political executions!’ Breivik burst out. ‘Knights Templar Europe has given me permission to execute
category A, B and C traitors. For me – that is, for us – the Knights Templar is the highest political authority in Norway.’

He admitted that those he had killed on the island were category C traitors.

‘Who decides which category people end up in?’

‘I’ve set it all out in my book. Strictly speaking, we are not authorised to execute category C traitors. Now, about my demands…’

His second demand
was to use the PC for a minimum of eight hours a day. It need not have internet access, but there had to be a printer. ‘I am an intellectual. Not a warrior. My calling is to fight with the pen, but occasionally one has to use the sword.’ Demand number three was access to Wikipedia. Demand number four was to serve his sentence with as few Muslims as possible. Demand number five was not to be given
any halal meat.

The officers in the next room communicated his demands to the police chiefs in Oslo, and the interviewers informed him that the demands would very probably be met. But they added that if there was to be an agreement, he must now tell them whether anyone was going to be killed in the imminent future.

‘Okay, if you agree to my most far-reaching list of demands I’m willing to hand
over details of the two cells that right now,
as we speak
, are planning acts of terrorism against parties supporting multiculturalism.

‘Go ahead.’

‘Well then, the security services must present a proposal to the Justice Committee to bring in the death sentence, by hanging, in Norway, and to use waterboarding as a method of torture.’

Then he asked for a cigarette, and was given one. He asked
for another drink and got that too.

‘It’s the media who are most to blame for what has happened today because they didn’t publish my views. One thus has to get the message out by other means.’ Then he suddenly said that the whole thing was tragic, and that his heart was weeping at what had happened that day.

‘You are the commander so the responsibility is yours,’ objected the interviewer.

‘My responsibility is to save Norway. I take full responsibility for everything out here, and I’m proud of the operation. If you only knew what hard work it’s been,’ he said. ‘It was bloody awful. I’ve been dreading this day for two years…’

The interrogation had already been going on for several hours when a team from Kripos arrived to carry out a preliminary examination of the accused. They took
DNA and urine samples, and scrapings were taken from his clothes.

The officers produced a camera. But the
Commander of the Norwegian anti-communist resistance movement
objected to being photographed. He had already had pictures taken and had posted them on the internet. Now the police would take the sort of pictures he had warned about in his manifesto. Photos of an offender in handcuffs, with
drooping shoulders. In the ones he had had taken at the studio he was in make-up and Photoshopped. They were portraits of him in his Freemasons’ suit, in his Knights Templar uniform, in his chemical protection suit. He had pasted the pictures into the final pages of his manifesto. No, there would be no Utøya photographs with AUF posters in the background. He would not have that.

But he was no
longer the one making the decisions.

In the picture later leaked to the press, Breivik is sitting in an armchair with his hands in his lap. His head is bowed, his eyes fixed on the floor.

His clothes were to be secured, as they would be used as evidence. The Kripos men got out a black sack.

‘Get undressed.’

He refused.

They said he had to.

He refused again.

Then he suddenly leapt up and
started tearing off his clothes.

‘Stop, stop!’

His garments were to be removed one at a time, at Kripos’s command. He could have explosives on him. Hidden weapons. It was the officers who would decide the order in which he was to remove the clothes, and when.

Finally he was standing there in a room of uniformed men in his underpants. He started posing, trying to look macho. Now he was all for
having his picture taken. He looked into the camera and thrust out his chest. His hands were clasped at one hip while he held his body taut in a classic bodybuilding pose, to make his muscles bulge as much as possible.

For a moment, the policemen were nonplussed. In another setting, another crime, it might have been ridiculous, but here … it was grotesque, it was simply incomprehensible.

Who on earth were they dealing with here?

Breivik gave a nervous laugh. He had misjudged it. He could tell. The joke had fallen flat. The opportunity had presented itself out of the blue, and now that he was for once happy with his body, it had kind of been ready for a show. The Commander had temporarily forgotten himself.

He was issued with a disposable white jumpsuit and quickly put it on. The
policemen found an old pair of shoes for him in the corridor. They could be the captain’s, or perhaps they belonged to one of the guards. Whoever they belonged to, he did not like them. But they were all he got.

The interrogation could continue.

‘You say we, so who are you, as a group?’

‘In Norway I’m the overall leader of our organisation. I’m the commander here. I’m the judge as well. I’m
the supreme authority here. The international Knights Templar can’t micromanage its Norwegian commander. Today I sent out a document to thousands of militant nationalists. Some countries have got further than Norway. France, for example, will be taken over by my brothers within fifteen years, and once they have established a decent base it will be easy to get me released from prison.’

‘You said
you were set up as an organisation in London in 2002. Have you been working towards this goal ever since then?’

‘To start with, I was a sleeping cell. I’ve never expressed extreme ideas until now. That’s why the PST hasn’t found me out. It’s people like me we want to recruit, people who are suitable, but who haven’t done anything to bring them to the attention of the police.’

He wanted to go
out and pee again, and when he was brought back in he asked if anyone had any
snus
. Someone did. He was given a wad of
snus
and put it under his top lip.

It was past midnight.

‘My operation will go on,’ he said. ‘But by means of the pen. History will judge me. But it’s also a question of how the media judge me. I draw a distinction between success in the techniques of warfare and media success.
The media certainly wants to portray me as a monster—’

‘Is it your aim to be portrayed as a monster?’

‘Not necessarily,’ he replied briskly. ‘The aim was not to be as brutal as I have been. When I evaluated people, I tried not to take the youngest. I took those who were older. There are moral boundaries, aren’t there? Even if I perhaps didn’t show that very clearly today.’

*   *   *

The night
had reached its darkest point. Outside, the July night was chilly. A tent had been erected for the men who were now conducting a full search of the island.

‘How long will it actually take for me to get a response to my first list of demands?’ Breivik pestered them. ‘If I don’t get access to a PC with Word in prison, I shall terminate myself. If I have no chance of contributing to the struggle
for the rest of my life, it will all be meaningless.’