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Norwegian mass killer to tell trial he killed in self defence

Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian mass killer, will demand that he be acquitted when his trial begins next week on the grounds that he shot dead his 77 victims in self defence.

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Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian mass killer, will demand that he be acquitted when his trial begins next week on the grounds that he shot dead his 77 victims in self defence.

The 33-year-old extremist confessed to planting a bomb near government buildings in Oslo, and then driving to the island of Utoya where he systematically shot 69 people, most of them teenagers.

He has argued that his actions were "necessary" to prevent his country being overwhelmed by what he perceived as an imminent Islamic takeover.

"He is going to invoke self defence," Geir Lippestad, his lawyer, told Norway's Dagbladet newspaper. "We, of course, understand that will not succeed, but we are obliged to present his arguments."

Timothy McVeigh, the leader of the group that carried out the Oklahoma bombing in 1995, made a similar argument, claiming he acted out of self defence and faced an "imminent danger" from the US government. McVeigh was found guilty and executed.

Norway is bracing itself for Breivik's initial testimony, which is expected on Monday or Tuesday. Lippestad warned earlier this week that Breivik was likely to use his podium to lament that he had not killed more people.

"My point in saying that was to prepare people, so that we will be more ready for what will come at the trial," he told Dagbladet. "I think we're going to hear many very provocative statements from him."

A panel of two judges and three magistrates are to rule on Breivik's case after a trial scheduled to last 10 weeks. The key question is likely to be that of Breivik's sanity, with the judges having to decide between two contradictory psychiatric assessments. The first report, submitted in November, concluded that Breivik is a paranoid schizophrenic who was psychotic at the time of the killings.

A second report, submitted on Tuesday, concluded that Breivik is sane and should be held criminally responsible.

Lippestad has said he intends to call a number of far-Right extremists and Islamists as witnesses in the trial, including Mullar Krekar, a Muslim cleric, based in Norway, who was arrested last month after making repeated death threats against politicians.

"We have to determine if the experts who evaluated Breivik mistakenly blew off his ideas and opinions, especially about an ongoing war, as paranoid hallucinations and a psychosis," Lippestad said. "The question is to know if there are in fact groups, even small ones, in Norway who agree. That could be important when it comes to the question of legal responsibility."

In the 1,500-page manifesto, Breivik released on the day of his attack, he claimed to be just one cell of a secret militia modelled on the medieval Knights Templar, dedicated to defending Christendom from the forces of Islam.

Police have found no evidence of this group or of the founding meeting Breivik claims he attended in London in 2001, prompting the first team of psychiatrists to write off the claims as bizarre, grandiose delusions.

Several of those who were on Utoya will leave Norway for the start of the trial, as they do not want to read or watch the coverage of Breivik's statements. Others have asked to be in the courtroom.
 

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