One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (69 page)

Then the date was set for the trial.
Newsweek
asked me to write one more story when the court case against Anders Behring Breivik opened in April 2012. That was to
be my second article about Norway. Until terror struck us, I had never written anything about my own country. It was uncharted territory. All my working life, I had been a foreign correspondent, starting off as a Moscow correspondent at twenty-three, straight from Russian studies at Oslo University. My home country was my refuge, not a place to write about. I came home from Tripoli just before the
trial was due to start, got my accreditation and a seat in the courtroom, and found myself knocked sideways.

I was not prepared.

*   *   *

I sat in room 250 for the ten weeks of the trial. Within those walls we were drip-fed the details of the planning and execution of the act of terrorism, day by day. The testimonies were short, concise, tailored to the purposes of the trial. Sometimes they
went deep, sometimes they broadened out. At times they supplemented each other and gave new perspectives while at others they stood alone. A witness could be in the box for ten or fifteen minutes, to be succeeded by another witness. These were drops of stories.

After the trial had finished, I realised I had to go deeper to find out what had really happened, and I started searching.

I found Simon,
Anders and Viljar. I found Bano and Lara.

This is their story.

*   *   *

One of Us
has come about thanks to all those who told me their stories. Some have chapters devoted to their childhood and youth while others appear as part of a background canvas of friends, neighbours, teachers, classmates, boy and girlfriends, colleagues, bosses and relations.

Parents and siblings have shared their
family histories. Friends have spoken of comradeship.

We collaborated on a continuous basis. They all read their texts along the way. Still, I was met with great understanding that this is my book and my interpretation.

Some of the conversations went on for days and nights, others were short phone calls. We talked on the way down from a steep mountain, on long walks along the Bardu River, in
bars in Tromsø or over Kurdish chicken stew in Nesodden.

I offer heartfelt thanks to those who shared the most. Bayan, Ali, Mustafa and Lara Rashid. Gerd, Viggo and Stian Kristiansen. Tone, Gunnar and Håvard Sæbø. And Viljar Hanssen and his family. They have told me about the worst thing of all: losing someone they loved.

Whether the stories are cut down to a few lines or cover several pages,
it is the multitude of conversations that have made this book possible. Thank you all so much. I know what it cost you.

*   *   *

Most people are given their full name in the book, while some are referred to by their first names, like Marte and Maria. I felt it was right to use first names for the scene when the two childhood friends are holding hands, lying on the path. Their full names are
Marte Fevang Smith and Maria Maagerø Johannesen. Marte was the only survivor of the eleven who were shot on Lovers’ Path. The bullet did not cause any major injuries to her head, only to her balance nerve. She can’t dance like she did before, while her best friend Maria died. What I have written about events on the path before and during the killing is based on what Marte remembers.

The first
time I mention someone, I have usually put down their full name. Some people do not appear in the book until ‘Friday’ – the chapter about 22 July – and disappear from the account the moment they are killed. These were the most painful parts of the book to send to their families. I asked all the parents affected to read the sections about their children and choose for themselves whether they wanted
their child to be part of the book. For me, it was important to describe for posterity exactly how that day was. In the end, no parent objected that I wrote about their child’s moment of death. I am very grateful for that.

The surviving young people who contributed to the book were also sent their texts to read through and correct.

*   *   *

The other strand of this book is
that man
. A man
many are reluctant to refer to by name. The perpetrator, the subject under observation, the accused, the defendant and finally: the sentenced prisoner. I do use his name. When writing about his childhood it was natural to use his first name; from 22 July onwards I use his surname or full name.

In journalism, it is important to go to the sources. This was the reason for my request for an interview
with him. Its refusal obliged me to base my account on what others say about him. I talked to his friends, members of his family, classmates, colleagues and former political associates. I read what he himself had written: in the manifesto, on the internet and in letters. I also paid attention to what he had to say during the trial, and what he subsequently wrote in letters to the press and in
official complaints.

Many of those close to him were unwilling to say anything. Some slammed down the phone. Others replied, ‘I’ve put him behind me. I’m through with him.’

I was not through with him, and eventually I found people who would talk, most of them anonymously. Very few of his former friends and classmates are named in this book. It is as though having known him leaves one branded.
Even so, a number of people made important contributions to my understanding of what Anders Behring Breivik was like in childhood, adolescence and adult life. In the chapter about his time as a tagger, those described are given their actual tagging names and will thus be recognised within their own circles. In the chapter on the Progress Party, no one demanded anonymity. I have given two business
partners and two childhood friends new names.

I tried for a year to secure an interview with Wenche Behring Breivik but her answer, through her lawyer Ragnhild Torgersen, was always the same: No.

In March 2013, I called her lawyer again. She said she would talk to her client one more time. Torgersen rang back: ‘Can you come to my office tomorrow?’

I was allowed to meet Wenche Behring Breivik
on the condition that she and her lawyer be allowed to read through the interview afterwards. The agreement was that if Wenche Behring Breivik were incapable of reading through it herself – her cancer had entered its final phase – her lawyer would do it. This she did, and approved the use of the interview. Torgersen was also present during our conversation, and both of us recorded it. Parts of the
interview appear in question-and-answer format; other parts are used to shed light on her son’s childhood in the chapters about his early life.

Several times I also requested a meeting with Jens David Breivik, the perpetrator’s father, but he would not be interviewed. I therefore had to restrict myself to what others told me about him. It was only when I sent him, in its entirety, what I had
written about him that I was able to enter into a dialogue with him, in which he corrected items he felt were wrong and gave me new information about his son.

Reports from the Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry were an invaluable source of information about Anders Behring Breivik’s childhood. I also talked to the professionals who observed him in that period. I judged this case to be
so much in the public interest that it justified using information from confidential reports.

In addition, reports from the expert psychiatrists associated with the trial, Synne Sørheim and Torgeir Husby, Terje Tørrissen and Agnar Aspaas, were extremely helpful. The accounts of what took place in their meetings with Breivik are taken from their reports. Parts of these reports have appeared in
the media in printed form; I worked from the uncensored versions.

I also made extensive use of the police interviews in the case. I had tens of thousands of pages of interviews, witness statements and background documents to read through and select from. In some instances I have used direct quotations from the interrogations. This applies to the interrogations of the perpetrator on Utøya and
at police headquarters in Oslo, and to the interviews with his mother when she was brought in on 22 July, both in the police car and later that same evening at the police headquarters. The conversations between Anders and his mother in the months leading up to his move to the farm, and later on in the wake of 22 July, are reconstructed from what Wenche told investigators during the autumn of 2011.
I have elected to make use of these documents that are not publicly available because I consider it justified by the vital importance of casting light on this terrorism case.

I have also used the police interviews of some witnesses who knew Breivik. In these instances, I have given no names.

The couple with whom Anders Behring Breivik was placed on several occasions when he was two years old
did not wish to contribute to the book. The information I provide about them is taken exclusively from their police interviews.

Other than that, I largely used the police interviews as background information and to check the facts of Anders Behring Breivik’s life.

*   *   *

In a number of places in the book, I refer to the perpetrator’s thoughts or judgements. Readers might want to know: How
does the author know this?

Everything is taken from what he himself said in police interviews, at the trial or to the psychiatrists.

I would like to give a few examples. In the chapter entitled ‘Friday’, I write in detail about Breivik’s thoughts during the first killings. In that sequence, various sentences are lifted directly from the trial transcripts. Breivik described his feelings and thoughts
both to the police in the days after the terror act and in court nine months later, as follows: ‘I don’t feel remotely like doing this’ and ‘Now or never. It’s now or never.’ These sentences are used as direct quotations. In some places his statements are turned into indirect speech: ‘His body was fighting against it, his muscles were twitching. He felt he would never be able to go through
with it. A hundred voices in his head were screaming: Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it!’ It was Breivik who talked about his body and his muscles, and referred to the hundred voices screaming in his head. I have used his own words. That is how I have worked throughout the book. His thoughts set out here all derive from what he said in police or court documents.

My statement that it was easy
for him to go on killing after the first assassinations is taken from what the gunman explicitly told the police and the court. He spoke at length about how difficult the first shot was and how easy it all felt once he broke through the barrier, an almost physical barrier. He said that initially it had felt unnatural to kill.

So the next question is this: Can we trust his account?

A journalist
must constantly evaluate and bear in mind the degree of veracity in any statement. In Breivik’s case, a number of his stories seem rather far-fetched. This applies particularly to his accounts of his childhood and youth, the positive gloss he puts on them and on his own popularity, and his claim to have been a king in hip-hop circles and a rising star in the Progress Party. My doubts about his
portrayal of these sections of his life stem from finding a large number of accounts that contradict the idealised picture he attempts to convey. These testimonies largely agree with each other and they diverge markedly from his own version of events.

The other point at which he appears to be making things up is in his account of the Knights Templar organisation. The Norwegian police never found
anything to verify his claims that the organisation existed or that he was a commander or leader of it. Nor could the prosecution discover that the organisation had any basis in fact.

These were the two subjects on which he declined to elaborate in court: his childhood and adolescence, and the Knights Templar. He said that the former was irrelevant and that his refusal to talk about the latter
was to ‘protect the identities of others in the network’.

The question of the Knights Templar was central to the discussion of whether Anders Behring Breivik was of sound mind. If the network did not exist, was it a delusion or a lie? The court’s verdict affirmed the latter.

Regarding the day on Utøya, the terrorist explained in detail and on several different occasions what he did, the order
in which he did it, and what he was thinking as he did it. He discussed this the same evening, on the island, and the next morning at the police station, and on a later site visit to the island, and to the psychiatrists and the court. He spoke in an easy, unforced way; he elaborated, made associations, thought over what he was not sure about and revised his account accordingly, and admitted that
there were some things he could not remember. It did not appear to be difficult for him to repeat things, to respond to the same questions over and over again, as it can be when one has constructed a story. The police made a thorough check of his log claims and timings. Thus far they have found nothing in his Utøya account that does not tally with the statements of the young people who were there
– in terms of the conversations he had, the words he shouted, or the concrete situations in which killings took place. The police have stated that in regard to his preparations and his implementation of his attack, they have not uncovered a single direct lie or misinformation.

However, there is some disagreement about when Breivik began the planning for his attack. The perpetrator claims it was
back in 2002. Neither the police nor the prosecution think he started that early. My job is not to speculate, but to look for information. What we know from the police logs is exactly how long he spent on every website, and when. We know that he played hardcore computer games after moving back in with his mother in 2006 (for example, he played for seventeen hours one New Year’s Eve). He gradually
turned from the games to anti-jihadist and right-wing extremist websites. In the chapter ‘Choose Yourself a World’ I restricted myself to well-founded facts about how the game he was playing was constructed, and external elements such as what his room looked like and the fact that he tapped away at the computer keyboard. I went so far as to conclude that it was ‘a good place to be’, that ‘the game
drew him in and calmed him down’ and that he lost interest in real life. I based the first of these statements on what he said, the second on comments from his friends and mother. I also based what I wrote on information from his fellow players, those who knew him as
Andersnordic
.