OSLO – Police will track funds used by anti-immigration zealot Anders Behring Breivik as part of a year-long investigation into the killing spree that left 77 dead and Norway stunned.
A specially created police unit will conduct the investigation, the biggest in Norway’s history, into all aspects of the July 22nd bombing in Oslo and the shooting spree on nearby Utoeya island.
Some of the 100 investigators now on the case are checking whether Breivik had financial help, a senior officer said, and are seeking clues in Bermuda, Antigua and other off-shore havens whose banks are not fully transparent.
“In the interviews he (Breivik) has said he worked for a long time and saved a lot of money to finance his activities later,” police prosecutor Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby said in an interview.
“It was several million Norwegian crowns – I won’t comment on the exact number – and he said it was from his own work, not from anyone else.” In a manifesto Breivik boasted he earned 4 million krone (€520,000) for his plot by 2005 and channelled some through the Caribbean and eastern Europe before losing about half in “stock speculation” by 2008.
Oslo police said they were collaborating with authorities in United States, Britain and the Nordic countries.
The deputy police chief of Oslo, Hans Halvorsen, said a senior officer would lead the probe, with teams dedicated to technical evidence, victims, witnesses, international co-operation and other aspects of the case.
Meanwhile, Mr Kraby would not confirm media reports that Breivik has demanded to be evaluated by a Japanese psychiatrist.
“I can confirm he does not want Norwegian psychiatrists,” he said, adding that two court-appointed mental health experts from Norway would begin evaluating him next week.
Mr Kraby also confirmed the broad outline of a report in Norwegian newspaper VGthat said Breivik called police near the end of his massacre of Labour Party youth – to say the following: "Breivik. Commander. Organised in the anticommunist resistance movement against Islamisation. The operation is completed and will surrender to Delta." Delta is the name of the heavily armed Oslo police unit that moved in on Breivik an hour after the island slaughter began.
“There was a phone call like that,” Mr Kraby said, adding police had not fully ascertained if it was Breivik’s voice. – (Reuters)