WITH CALM defiance Norway will this morning face down the man, one of their own, responsible for the worst massacre in its post-war history that has killed 93 and injured 97.
Anders Behring Breivik (32) who describes himself as a conservative Christian, has admitted carrying out the twin attacks he described yesterday as “terrible but necessary” but will plead not guilty.
As Norway struggles to deal with a massive breach of trust, prime minister Jens Stoltenberg vowed that his country would “never give up its values”.
“Our answer is more democracy, more openness, and more humanity – but never naivety,” he told a memorial service in Oslo.
At noon today, the country will observe one minute’s silence in memory of the dead.
In an Oslo courtroom, meanwhile, reporters will get their first glimpse of the man who hopes his attack will trigger a “revolution” against multiculturalism and what he sees as the growing threat of radical Islam in Norway and around Europe.
Norwegians were determined yesterday to deprive him of that satisfaction.
“I believe Norway will emerge stronger,” said Andreas Lubiana (24) outside Oslo cathedral.
A manifesto reportedly written by Breivik and circulated on the internet yesterday suggests the author saw the attacks as the bloody means to a singular end: a court case offering him “a stage to the world”.
The 1500-page document, including many passages plagiarised from other texts, describes his lengthy campaign against “cultural Marxists, multiculturalist traitors and Muslims”.
“He wished to attack society and the structure of society he wants a revolution,” said his lawyer, Geir Lippestad.
“But he feels that what he has done does not deserve punishment.”
Breivik has told police he acted alone, but police have said they are still hunting for possible accomplices. Eye witnesses from the island report seeing a second gunman.
Investigators said yesterday evening that they had located the last victims’ bodies in a lake around the island of Utoeya, an hours’ drive from Oslo.
Oslo-born Breivik told police he went to the island on Friday afternoon, two hours after detonating a powerful bomb in Oslo’s government quarter at 3.26pm.
Police said he travelled from Oslo by car, carrying a handgun and an automatic rifle and arrived on the island by ferry.
Dressed as a police officer, he gathered the mainly teenagers attending a summer camp around him before opening fire with a machine gun.
Eye-witnesses report him moving methodically around the small island, shooting everyone in sight. His shooting spree continued for 90 minutes; many victims were shot in the water as they swam for safety.
Survivor Thorrbjørn Vereide (22) told yesterday how Breivik lured a group of young people out of hiding.
“He said: ‘It’s safe to come out, you will be saved, I’m a policeman.’ We were in a gang of 30 to 40 and followed his instructions when he began to shoot,” said Mr Vereide. “When he was finished there were five or six of us left standing. We ran away to a cave.”
More than 20 coroners, dentists and DNA experts have been mobilised to identify the dead before a list of names is released.
Yesterday afternoon a special investigation team raided a house in eastern Oslo, linked to the gunman, and detained several people before releasing them without charge.
Meanwhile, police in the village of Sundvollen, near the island of Utoeya explained why it took them nearly 45 minutes to reach the island after the alarm was raised because they didn’t have a suitable boat. They waited for a special unit from Oslo who landed on the island and a further 50 minutes to locate gunman. He was caught without a struggle.
By that time several local residents had mobilised their boats and rescued several dozens youths from the island, where they were attending a summer camp run by the youth wing of Norway’s ruling Labour Party.
As Oslo gets back to work today many government ministries, including Mr Stoltenberg’s own office, stand in ruins begins after a powerful detonation blew out windows in a four-block radius.
Police and soldiers maintained a cordon around the ruined buildings last night while Oslo residents kept a silent, candlelight vigil at the nearby cathedral.
In his manifesto titled “2083 – A European Declaration of Independence”, Breivik described the European Union as a “coup d’etat in slow motion”. He attacked the Irish government’s handling of the two Lisbon Treaty referenda as “powerful testimony to the evil nature of the European Union”.
To back up his arguments, he drew on a 2007 essay by EU critic Anthony Coughlan that EU integration “would lead to a “gradual coup by government executives against legislatures, and by politicians against the citizens who elect them”.
Muslim groups yesterday criticised Norwegian media for jumping to conclusions on Friday that the attacks had an Islamist background.
In an editorial, the daily Aftenpostenwarned of double standards in public debate. "We have warned many times warned against holding Muslims collectively responsible for terror. This principle applies also the other way."