#13, On Justice
"One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests."
-Breivik's Twitter account (the first and last Tweet)
A Killer in Paradise: Inside the Norway Attacks
By William Boston (July 23, 2011)
In a moment of national tragedy, people tend to huddle together. That instinct — the need for community to gather and console one another in a moment of collective shock and pain — was Anders Behring Breivik's most insidious weapon in the arsenal he carried onto the tiny island of Utoeya, a wooded retreat in Lake Tyrifjord, about an hour's drive from Oslo.
Breivik, a handsome 32-year-old Norwegian with blue eyes and a short crop of blond hair, arrived at the lakeside pier dressed as a Norwegian police officer. Hours before, a car bomb that police believe Breivik planted and detonated in the heart of the Norwegian government quarter had ripped through the neighborhood, killing at least seven people and injuring many more. It now seems that the Oslo bomb was a murderous distraction, a meticulously planned bit of misdirection. The apparent attempt on the life of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, at first thought to be the work of Islamist extremists, kept Norway's crack antiterrorism squad pinned down in Oslo while Breivik drove to Utoeya. He flashed his ID — which was fake but good enough to fool the security guards at the lake. And they waved him in. "He gets out of the car and shows ID, says he's sent there to check security, that that is purely routine in connection with the terror attack [in Oslo]," Simen Braenden Mortensen, one of the camp guards, told the daily Verdens Gang. "It all looks fine, and a boat is called, and it carries him over to Utoeya. A few minutes passed, and then we heard shots," he said
When he arrived at the island, Breivik found people hurrying into the main house at the retreat. Some were crying, walking arm in arm as they tried to make sense of the images of devastation filling TV screens in the aftermath of the Oslo bombing, which by then was being described as Norway's 9/11 moment. The guests on the island had particular reason to be rocked by the events in Oslo's government quarter. Each year, for as long as anyone can remember, the youth wing of the Norwegian Labour Party has gathered there. Founded in 1887, Labour is Norway's largest political party, and it has been the major force in the country since World War II, giving up power to the Conservative Party only for brief periods. Gathered at the retreat of the Labour Party's youth wing were the country's future leaders, the teenage children of the ruling elite. By the time Breivik approached the main house, witnesses recall, about 80 people had gravitated there. "We had all gathered in the main house to talk about what had happened in Oslo," a survivor, a 16-year-old called Hana, told the Aftenposten, an Oslo daily.
Breivik, in his policeman getup and and by then wearing earplugs, urged the people to move into the main house. "I'd like to gather everyone," he said, according to Hana. Then Breivik, brandishing an automatic machine gun, ran into the main house and opened fire on the crowd.
With the eyes of the world on Oslo, it took more than an hour for Norwegian police to comprehend and respond to the massacre that was unfolding at the idyllic island retreat. Children ran screaming out of the house and across the grounds, only to be gunned down in their tracks. Breivik, according to witnesses, remained calm, methodically seeking out his victims as they ran into the hollows and behind the stones and bushes, where they attempted to hide. He chased them to the shores of the island, a thin, 500-yd. (450 m) strip of land in a gray lake in the Norwegian woods. Children jumped into the water, attempting to swim away. Some managed to reach boats that showed up to rescue survivors.
Khamshajiny Gunaratnam, a 23-year-old student who survived the Utoeya attack, wrote about the episode on her blog. She describes being terrified, crouching on the floor of the toilets in the main house to hide from the killer, who was busy hunting down her friends who were still out in the open. Seizing an opportunity, Gunaratnam and a few of her friends made a dash for the lake, jumped into the icy water and swam frantically to a waiting boat. "Even when we had reached the boat, I could not relax," she wrote on her blog. "He could still hit us with his machine gun!"
People who live near the island described horrific scenes as scores of teenagers rushed for the water as the shooter fired on them. "They were so young, between 14 and 19 years old," said Anita Lien, a 42-year-old who lives near the lake.
By time he was arrested Friday evening, Breivik, it is believed, killed 84 people on the island of Utoeya and at least seven in the Oslo bombing. On Saturday, police were still combing the woods and searching the lake for bodies. A van containing undetonated explosives was found near the lake. As Norwegians seek to understand what happened, a few details about Breivik are emerging that suggest he sought to make his rampage more similar to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, in which 168 people were killed, than to the al-Qaeda attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Norwegian police describe Breivik as a conservative, right-wing extremist and a Christian fundamentalist. Norwegian media have reported that he attended the Oslo Commerce School and describe him as a conservative and a nationalist. His views are hard to characterize. He appears to hate communists and Muslims and harbors right-wing views. But he is not a neo-Nazi. Breivik was a regular reader of right-wing websites and blogs like Gates of Vienna and was a follower of the blogger Fjordman. On a Facebook page that Breivik set up days before the attacks, he cited an eclectic group of heroes including Winston Churchill, Dutch right-wing populist Geert Wilders and Norwegian anti-Nazi resistance fighter Max Manus. Breivik appears to see himself as a mercenary in a war against the spread of Islam in Europe as well as against socialism and foreign domination of Norway. Like the contributors to Gates of Vienna, Breivik appears to be an adherent of the right-wing conspiracy theories about Eurabia: the idea that Muslims are infiltrating European society with the goal of domination. The Gates of Vienna website, for example, carries a picture of old Vienna with this caption: "At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are now in a new phase of a very old war."
"No one knows exactly what triggered him," Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College, tells TIME.com. "But he seems to see himself on an apocalyptic mission to warn Europe about the dangers of Eurabia."
Ranstorp has sifted through hundreds of Breivik's blog postings to try to learn more. In 2003, he says, Breivik inquired online about a Beretta handgun, but it is unclear from the posts whether he wanted to obtain the weapon or ever did so. Although the attacks in Oslo and Utoeya were precisely planned and executed, Breivik does not appear to ever have had military training. On his Facebook site, which has been shut down, Breivik says he enjoys playing computer games such as World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2. Other hobbies include hunting. He lists his hometown as Oslo.
Breivik planned his Oslo attacks with the same care he applied to his Utoeya ambush. He needed several tons of fertilizer to construct his car bombs; Norwegian authorities believe he obtained it without raising suspicion by moving from Oslo to a small rural town called Rena in June or July, where he set up a farm under the name Breivik Geofarm. He is believed to be the sole proprietor and may have used the farm as a cover to obtain the bomb material.
Just as police have turned up no evidence of an Islamic plot, authorities have failed to find evidence linking Breivik to a specific right-wing group. Norway and Sweden experienced a surge of neo-Nazi violence in the 1990s, but programs set up to defuse the situation were quite successful — one reason even Europol, in its latest report on right-wing extremism in Europe, failed to see any warning signs that such an attack was possible. Police can only speculate as to Breivik's motives and the full extent of the operation, but the evidence so far points to him as a lone, perhaps deranged attacker with right-wing views who set out to target a symbol of the government.
"There is an Oklahoma comparison," Hagai M. Segal, a terrorism expert with New York University in London, tells TIME.com. "That could be an incredibly serious development. I am skeptical that there is a larger right-wing group connected to this, but it wouldn't surprise me if you had a small cell. It is extremely hard to do something like this by yourself."
In travel guides, Norway is often described as the most beautiful place on the planet, a tiny nation of 4.8 million with an enormous countryside of natural beauty, icy mountains and deep, dark fjords, northern lights and the midnight sun. As they count their losses in the bitter days and months ahead, Norwegians will long for a more innocent past. Utoeya is now a symbol of what has changed, says Prime Minister Stoltenberg: "A paradise island has been transformed into a hell."
SOURCE: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2084835-2,00.html
Anders Behring Breivik is responsible for deaths of 91 people. His meticulously planned attack on Norway's capital, Oslo, and the tiny island of Utoeya represent one of the worst attacks on European soil since WWII. Norway's current system of law limits the maximum term of incarceration to 21 years. Most of those jailed serve only 14 of those years and are put on parole for the remainder of their sentence. Given the magnitude of Breivik's crimes, should the Norwegian judicial system make an exception and lengthen his potential sentence? What is a just sentence for Breivik's crimes? Defend your position.
Just: (a) acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or good (b) being what is merited
Sentence: (a) judgment; specifically, one formally pronounced by a court or judge in a criminal proceeding and specifying the punishment to be inflicted upon the convict (b) the punishment so imposed sentence
-Teacher Lee