One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (15 page)

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The most powerful figure in Anders’s circle was Jøran Kallmyr, leader of the Progress Party Youth in Oslo. Anders often added comments to Jøran’s posts on the forum, eager to support and motivate, but seldom received an answer.

Anders, who had devised battle
tactics for his toy soldiers as a boy, drawn maps and escape routes across Oslo in his time as a tagger and later sketched out business plans and marketing strategies, now drew up a chart of the Progress Party Youth organisation and planned his political future on paper.

To qualify for nomination to stand in the city council elections in 2003 the local branches had to submit suggestions to the
nomination committee a year in advance, so now was the time to strike. The candidates under consideration were then called in for interview by the committee, which was led by a former diplomat, Hans Høegh Henrichsen.

Anders advised everybody to stand for election and wrote in May 2002 that he, Jøran Kallmyr and Lene Langemyr were preliminarily registered as candidates.

Jøran Kallmyr was the
first of the three to be called in. ‘He’s made of stern stuff,’ was Høegh Henrichsen’s verdict. ‘Enquiring, interested, alert,’ he noted. The young man demonstrated a good understanding of Progress Party policies and could sustain an argument. A place on the list. Lene Langmyr was called in next. She was a controversial candidate; someone had sown seeds of doubt about how she conducted her life. The
elderly diplomat made some discreet enquiries, turned up unannounced at her shop in Oslo one day, and then dismissed the rumours. He judged her to be ‘a usable and interesting candidate’. Not all that strong academically, but she had drive, was enterprising and was full of fighting spirit, which he valued highly. Lene was examined on Progress Party policy by the party’s grey-haired elders, and
passed muster.

Anders was left waiting for a call.

He came up with several explanations for the time it was taking. The other parties were better at putting forward youth candidates, he complained. After all, he knew the elderly Høegh Henriksen from the Uranienborg-Majorstuen branch. Back then, Anders had even served as the deputy representative on the governing boards of the Majorstuen old
people’s home and Uranienborg School to maximise his chances.

‘They’re sure to call you in soon,’ said Lene. ‘Remember how many people they’ve got to get through.’

Lene and Anders made plans together. They wanted to apply for membership of the Oslo Pistol Club. They were both very interested in guns and spent a long time discussing different types.

In the military, Lene had grown familiar with
everything from the standard AG-3 rifle to all sorts of machine guns, Glock pistols and the MP5 sub-machine gun. She was a good shot and could vividly remember the pride she had taken in mastering something hard, doing it well, coming up to scratch.

In Anders, she was surprised that someone who had not done their military service had such a good overview of a range of weapons. ‘The army really
ought to buy this type of machine gun,’ he could say, and then elaborate on its range, applications and type of ammunition. Or he might show her something on the internet or in a magazine, commenting, ‘This sub-machine gun’s better than the one they’re using now.’ He had a vast store of detailed knowledge about a whole range of firearms.

Anders had been exempted from military service because
he was registered as his mother’s carer. After a serious herpes infection she had had a drain inserted in her head and she needed nursing for an extended period.

Lene was touched by the care Anders gave his mother. He told her how his mother was faring after her illness. She had changed since the surgical procedure, he said, become more absent-minded, more disorganised and terribly depressed.

Anders had also told Lene about his mother’s unhappy childhood, about his grandmother who went mad and the uncles his mother never wanted him to meet. He told her how self-sacrificing his mother had been when he was growing up, on her own with two children. But he also criticised her for having lost touch with her relations. He would so much have liked a big family.

He must be a kind boy since
he has such a warm relationship with his mother, thought Lene, though she could not shake off the feeling that it was all a bit odd. He must definitely have been the favourite and spoilt all his life, she decided.

Anders would never tell Lene anything about his father.

‘He doesn’t want any contact with his children’ was all Anders would say.

On the internet, Anders adopted a tone that was jovial
yet intense. His writing was peppered with emoticons, exclamation marks and jokey remarks in brackets or quotation marks. He wrote a long list of things members ought to do if they wanted to be the next Carl Ivar Hagen or Siv Jensen, the young woman who had been elected vice-chairman and proved her resilience and ambition in a male-dominated party. ‘Knowledge of selling and marketing is as important
as knowledge of ideology and theoretical policy issues,’ he wrote. It also helped to know something about psychology and law, be thoughtful and read a variety of newspapers. Anybody who had worked in sales would have a clear advantage: ‘You have to be good at debating – be articulate, but talk about things in an accessible way.’ He suggested starting with some practice in front of the mirror,
and recording yourself as an aid to improving performance. If you wanted to be taken seriously you had to dress professionally, and there were occasions when it was better to sit there quietly than to say anything stupid ‘in front of the grown-ups’. Teamwork was crucial, and ‘if we, the capable new blood in the Progress Party Youth, don’t assert ourselves in the main party other young people
will come to prominence there.’

‘Organisation freak,’ groaned Jøran Kallmyr when he read what the deputy of the Oslo West branch had written. Behring’s a total outsider, yet he sounds like one of the inner circle, he thought when he saw the way Anders was dispensing tips to people at the top.

It sounded familiar.
He was behaving like a king, but he was only a toy.

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In the course of
his first summer’s posting on the forum, Anders devoted more and more time to the subject of Islam. His tone was cautiously conciliatory. On 11 July 2002, when nearly everybody was away on holiday, he wrote, ‘It’s important to make the point that Islam is a great religion (on a level with Christianity) and that Muslims are generally good people (on a level with Christians).’

He stressed that
it was ‘certain aspects of negative cultures related to Islam that should be criticised, not Islam itself’. There was an essential difference, he explained, referring to the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who claimed a secret Islamic invasion of Europe was under way. ‘I wouldn’t recommend anybody in the Progress Party Youth to fall in with this approach or they could be risking their political
career,’ he advised.

Later that day, the conflict in the Middle East made waves in the little pond of Norwegian youth politics. The Workers’ Youth League – the Labour Party’s youth organisation, known by the abbreviation AUF – formally accused the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon of a breach of international law and asked for him to be brought before a Norwegian court. The charges were to
be murder, opening fire on ambulances and the destruction of property.

When Hans Høegh Henrichsen heard about the allegation, he immediately rang the Israeli embassy and asked for an audience for the leader of the Oslo Progress Party Youth, Jøran Kallmyr. The audience was granted. ‘Now we’ll be able to gather the material for a counter-attack!’ Høegh Henrichsen told the young politician. The
youth leader had the Israeli point of view explained to him, and adopted it as his own.

That afternoon, Jøran Kallmyr came down hard on the AUF, on the allegation and on Yasser Arafat in a post he called ‘The anti-Semites of the AUF’.

Anders Behring did not let the opportunity of a discussion with Kallmyr pass him by.

‘They’re a pack of idiots! And they certainly haven’t got a clue about the
law,’ he wrote of the AUF, adding that the police should fine them for making a false allegation. It was Jøran who mobilised the heavy artillery, Anders just agreed with what he wrote, and joked that the Progress Party Youth should make an allegation against Yasser Arafat.

Two weeks later, the Director of Public Prosecution dismissed the complaint on formal grounds. The International Criminal
Court would be the appropriate legal authority for such a case.

The hot summer faded, autumnal weather came sweeping in and the wind whistled. It was the coldest autumn in living memory, and Anders still had not been called in for interview.

The chair of the nomination committee never read anything that Anders posted on the internet, but he had met him.

‘He seems pleasant and reasonable,’ was
Høegh Henrichsen’s assessment, ‘but isn’t he a bit vague?’

Anders Behring had failed to make any particular impression on the older man. He had only come to a couple of meetings and had not distinguished himself there. His name had been put into the ring along with a list of other names, but no one from Anders’s local ‘adult’ branch – Majorstuen-Uranienborg – felt he was the right man. It was
the local branch that had to interview and approve individuals from their district who were proposed to the nomination committee. For them it was the personal impression that counted, not anyone’s empire-building on the internet.

He was not weighed and found wanting.

He was not even weighed.

He was never called for interview.

His name did not go on the list.

Just before Christmas, the nomination
list was finalised. Two youth candidates were nominated. Jøran was on the list. Lene was on the list.

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Anders’s posts on the forum grew more negative. ‘The sad thing about the political system in Norway is that it often isn’t the most competent who get political power, but those who are best at networking.’

He told people that Jøran Kallmyr had promised to support his candidature,
but had stabbed him in the back instead. That was what stopped him becoming a leader in the party, he explained to his online buddy PeeWee. ‘Kallmyr went behind my back.’

‘How the h … is the PPY supposed to recruit voters under 30 if they haven’t any high-profile young parliamentarians???’ he wrote in the new year, and, ‘The way I see it, the central executive committee has been far too passive
when it comes to developing a comprehensive youth strategy! Is there any kind of strategy at all??’

He was a nobody, and it was almost election time.

Jøran was voted onto the council and Lene was elected a substitute member. Soon, Jøran was appointed a secretary to a local government commissioner and later a commissioner, and Lene became a regular council member.

In one of his last posts in
the summer of 2003, Anders predicted civil war once the Muslims were in the majority in Norway. The Islamisation of the West was alarming.

On that last point, many in the Progress Party agreed with him.

For his part, he had lost interest in the party. He stopped going along to the offices or to their social events. If they didn’t want him, he didn’t want them either. He moved on, out into the
world. Without Jøran; without Lene.

‘High Quality Fake Diplomas!!’

E Tenebris ad Lucem

From Darkness into Light

Motto of the St John Lodge
‘Saint Olaus to the Three Pillars’

Sales of false diplomas had taken off. He made his first million.

He made his second million.

He was actually getting rich.

The money was pouring into accounts in tax havens like Antigua and Barbuda, St Vincent and the Bahamas. He had also opened accounts
in Latvia and Estonia. That way, he could avoid paying tax in Norway. The banks offered him anonymous credit cards that meant he could make withdrawals from ATM machines in Oslo without his name being registered.

His mother helped him with this money laundering. He had asked her to open three bank accounts. There she deposited the cash her son gave her, before transferring it to him. Within a
short space of time she had laundered four hundred thousand kroner.

He got the idea while he was still active in the Progress Party. It had struck him that there could be a market for false diplomas and he set up a website,
diplomaservices.com
,
in the autumn of 2002.

His company, City Group, operated through addresses such as
bestfakediploma.com
and
superfakedegree.com
.
They advertised ‘Bachelor’s,
master’s and doctorate diplomas available in the field of your choice’. Double exclamation marks were sprinkled across the pages. ‘
Receive a high quality fake diploma within 10 days!!
’ ran the headline in bold italics. The cost was around a hundred dollars per diploma, and the customer was promised a full refund if he could find better print quality anywhere else. For those wanting a complete
package of exam certificate plus graduation diploma from a particular university, there was a special-offer price of 295 dollars.

A young man in Indonesia drew up the diplomas to order and then emailed them to Anders in Oslo for approval. There were medical-school diplomas, doctorates and engineering qualifications, diplomas from organisations and societies, even prize certificates. Sometimes
Anders did a first draft and then sent it to his employee in Asia, to whom he paid a monthly salary of seven hundred dollars.

The web pages brought in orders for several hundred diplomas a month. The company occupied most of Anders’s time, apart from weekends, when he would be out on the town spending his money, freely at times but never recklessly. Anders had landed himself a nice circle of
friends: young men from the West End, some from the School of Commerce, a classmate or two from primary-school days, a few others who had turned up along the way.