One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (58 page)

Nor should
the psychiatrists underestimate the importance of what he had learnt from al-Qaida, he said. Islamic militants were his source of inspiration. He was like them. A politically motivated aggressor.

In contrast to the first two psychiatrists, Terje Tørrissen and Agnar Aspaas studied the language and opinions of websites on which Breivik had been active, such as Gates of Vienna and document.no.

‘You can’t isolate the ideological, even if you decide to leave it out of a report,’ Breivik had stressed.

Just a couple of days before the trial, the new report was presented. This pair of psychiatrists concluded that Breivik suffered from
dissocial personality disorder
with
narcissistic traits
. He had a ‘grandiose perception of his own importance’ and saw himself as ‘unique’. He had a vast appetite
for ‘praise, success and power’ and was totally lacking in ‘emotional empathy, remorse or affective expression’ vis-à-vis those touched by the acts he had committed.

In legal terms, a narcissistic personality disorder means that a person is criminally responsible, because the disorder is not considered to be based in psychosis. Tørrissen and Aspaas concluded that Breivik was not psychotic either
at the time of the acts of which he was accused, nor during the observation. He could therefore be held criminally liable.

These two reports were then pitched against each other as the case opened on the morning of Monday 16 April 2012.

*   *   *

For weeks the rain had deluged bare trees. Dirty grey snow had melted and run along the streets, leaving in its wake the detritus of winter, grass
covered by the previous year’s rotting leaves, and a season’s dog mess. The city had still not had its spring cleaning.

The night-time frosts kept seeds and buds slumbering and daytime temperatures that crept a few degrees above zero were not enough to wake them. But in the course of the night, the cloud cover had broken. This Monday morning there were glimpses of colours that people had not
seen for a long time. Wasn’t that a little bud on the branch of the cherry tree? And that tulip on its way out of its sheath of leaves, would it be pink or yellow?

It was worse in nice weather, Gerd Kristiansen said. The grief was hardest to bear in the sunshine because Anders,
her Anders
, had so loved the sun.

Those who were to attend the first day of the trial had risen at dawn. Hours of queuing
were anticipated to get through the security checks. Some white marquees with plastic windows, the sort you have at summer parties in case it rains, had been erected in front of the entrance to house mobile scanners.

There was barely an empty spot in front of the Law Courts; every square metre had been taken over by crush barriers or the press. Vans with antennae on their roofs were transmitting
live pictures worldwide. The TV faces had momentous expressions.

The rays of the early morning sun created haloes round the journalists in the security queue; they glinted on the crush barriers and dazzled the police officers holding weapons loaded with live ammunition by the solid front door.

Beyond the first few metres of daylight, the building darkened. The staircase to the first floor wound
its way round a glass lift. Black ropes divided the Law Courts into zones. The colour of your admission card indicated which zones you were allowed to be in. The blue ones were for those affected by the case: survivors, next of kin, the bereaved and public advocates. The black were the parties in the case; the green were healthcare workers. The press had red cards. All had to wear their laminated
cards round their necks for the duration of the case. The lanyards were black, apart from for those with red cards. They also had red lanyards which they were to keep visible, so they could easily be spotted if they strayed into the wrong place. On the cards were your name, your photo, your status and a bar code so the scanner would detect it if you tried to enter a restricted zone.

The whole
first floor was set aside for the case. There were two large rooms with work stations for the press, one of them with simultaneous interpretation and an editing room for TV transmissions. There were waiting rooms for witnesses, rest areas and a big room where next of kin, the bereaved and the survivors would be left undisturbed. In the depths of the building was room 250, guarded by another team
of police officers. Only a small band of people entered there.

*   *   *

The silver-grey hands were both pointing to the number nine.

The seats had filled up. Necks with black lanyards and necks with red lanyards created a striped effect in the rows. There were roughly equal numbers of each, about a hundred red, about a hundred black.

On the public side of the partition, selected photographers
were standing ready to capture the entrance of the parties. The photographers were allowed to take pictures until the court was in session.

There were a number of wall-mounted cameras in the room; their lenses covered most angles. In the editing room, a TV producer from the Norwegian Broadcasting Company was seated in front of a bank of screens. She cut continuously and expertly from one shot
to another: ‘Camera 1, there, Camera 2, hold, over to Camera 6.’ The pictures went direct to the live TV broadcast and to courtrooms all over the country.

Seventeen district courts were showing what the public in the courtroom could see. The regional courts had set up big screens and loudspeakers for the transmissions from Oslo.

In Nord-Troms District Court sat Tone and Gunnar Sæbø. Gerd and
Viggo Kristiansen were there too. Now they would see him, hear him speak. The one who had taken their boys from them.

The Rashid family had fled the whole thing. For weeks the papers had been full of details of the coming trial. Mustafa, Bayan, Lara and Ali had just wanted to get away, so they were on a trip to Spain. They could not bring themselves to give the perpetrator the attention that
following the trial would accord him.

The prosecution found their places. Then the public advocates, the defence. Police guards were already in position.

He is in the building
, wrote a journalist from a news agency. The words flew out across the world:
Er ist in dem Gebäude. Il est dans le bâtiment.

It was ten to nine.

*   *   *

The door of the waiting cell was opened. He stood up from the
bench and was put in handcuffs. Court guards in pale blue shirts took him out and along the hallway.

The lift doors opened and he stepped inside with two guards. The lift was cramped. The three men were pressed close against each other.

The doors opened onto a white corridor. They stepped out, rounded a corner and turned into another corridor. The last stretch had been redecorated at the same
time as room 250. The windows along the corridor were frosted. Their bolted frames were painted an industrial grey. The daylight barely penetrated from outside.

There was a court guard in front, then him, then another guard behind. He filled his lungs with air. He straightened up, pulled back his shoulders. The door to room 250 was opened. He went in.

Nobody there.
He had entered a little corridor
running along the side of the courtroom, a space where no one could see him. He followed the blue shirt barely ten more steps – then the hail of flashes, a cascade of clicking cameras.
He is in the room
, tapped the news reporters. Shining lenses were directed only at him.

They zoomed in on a pale face. He was less toned than before, a little jowlier.

He was unable to resist a smile. The moment
he had been waiting for, preparing for, dreaming of. Now it was here. He pursed his lips to control the smile, nodded to his defence team and took his seat between them as he stole a glance at the audience. His eyes darted round the room; after all, this was not for him to look at them, but for them to look at him. Still, he just had to see, see them all, all those people looking at him.

His
hands were cuffed in front of him and connected to a wide belt fastened round his hips. A broad-shouldered detention guard fumbled with a key to unlock the handcuffs. The accused gave an almost apologetic look to the audience as the man struggled to remove the cuffs. Once they were off, dangling from the hip belt, he clamped his right fist to his chest, thrust his arm out straight and then raised
it in a salute. Long enough for the photographers to immortalise the moment, he held the clenched fist at head height. A gasp ran through the courtroom. It was five to nine.

He raises his arm in a right-wing extremist salute, wrote the news agencies. He pours himself a glass of water. Drinks. Looks at a pile of papers he has in front of him.
Messages flashed out second by second from the journalists
in the room.

The public prosecutors go over and shake hands with him!

Foreign journalists were bewildered to see this cordiality. Were they really shaking his hand?

The public advocates and the victims’ defence lawyers shake his hand too!

In some countries they would have put him in a cage. They would have taken his suit and white shirt and cropped his hair. His gleaming silk tie would have
been out of the question.

In a cage or not, there were many in the room who would willingly have seen him humiliated. And humiliation was what he himself feared most of all. Being reviled was nothing in comparison to being humiliated.

Having people uncover the cracks in him.

Tørrissen once asked him about vulnerability. ‘Do you have a vulnerable side?’ the psychiatrist had asked. ‘Not being
loved,’ Breivik answered. ‘That must be every person’s greatest fear, not being loved.’

Now he hoped for one thing. That his mother would not appear in the witness box. She had been called to give evidence, but she had asked to be excused. She was his Achilles heel, he had told the psychiatrists. She was the only one who could disconcert him now, bring the whole thing down. That was why he had
not agreed to any prison visits from her before the trial. Up to now, everything had gone as he wanted it. The eyes of the whole world were on him.

The public prosecutors and public advocates returned to their places after the handshakes. He sat down.

He sits down.

It was nine o’clock.

The judges come in.

The court rose; the two public prosecutors, the defence lawyers, the public advocates,
the public, the press, everybody rose, except for one: the defendant.

He remains in his seat. He smiles.

That is to say, he tried to conceal a smile. He sat with his legs planted wide apart. Everyone could see that he was not in shackles beneath the desk. He shifted round in the comfortable chair, which had a good, broad back. He looked round, settled himself into the chair. His eyes scanned
the rows of seats. Suddenly his lips curved into yet another smile. He had seen someone he knew. Kristian, his former friend and partner, was in the front row. What was he doing here?

Well, the tabloid
Verdens Gang
had invited him to use one of their places so he could tell their readers afterwards
what it was like to see his former friend again
. Both of them averted their eyes.

*   *   *

‘The court is in session!’

There was a quick rap of the gavel on the bench. The head judge, Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen, made an authoritative figure. She was an experienced judge, around fifty years of age. She had short, greying hair, clear blue eyes and a thin mouth. At the neck of her robe was a hint of a lace blouse.

The accused wanted to set the agenda from the start, and spoke immediately.

‘I do not recognise the Norwegian court or law because your mandate has come from parties that support multiculturalism.’

He cleared his throat. The judge looked straight at him and was about to say something when he continued.

‘I am also aware that you are a friend of Gro Harlem Brundtland’s sister.’

His voice was high-pitched.

The judge asked if that meant he wished to raise a concrete objection
to her participation in the proceedings. The defence team shook their heads. Not as far as they knew.

No, he did not want that. He simply wanted to make a point.

Wenche Arntzen set out the procedural rules for the trial. She was rapid and concise. There was no time to lose here. She asked the accused to stand and confirm his full name and date of birth.

‘Anders Behring Breivik, born 13th of
February, 1979.’

He appeared meek now, and spoke in little more than a mumble.

When the judge came to his profession, she said, ‘Well, you are not working.’

Breivik protested.

‘I am a writer and I work from prison,’ he said.

He was instructed to sit down.

*   *   *

Then the charges were to be read out by the female half of the prosecution duo, the blonde and elegant Inga Bejer Engh.

‘Please
go ahead,’ said Arntzen.

Bejer Engh got to her feet. She appeared calm. In a clear voice she began to read out the charges: that he stood accused under the terrorism paragraph, §147a of the Norwegian Penal Code.

The Oslo public prosecution hereby judges that Anders Behring Breivik, in accordance with §39 or the Penal Code … should be transferred for mandatory psychiatric health care … for committing while in a psychotic state an act otherwise punishable by law.

In other words, the prosecution agreed with the first psychiatric report, which took the view that Breivik was sick and could be treated.

The charges continued. An act of terrorism, read Bejer Engh. An explosion. Loss of human life. Premeditated killings. Under severely aggravated circumstances.

The bomb detonated at 15.25:22 with violent explosive force and resulting pressure wave, intentionally putting a large number of people in the buildings of the government quarter or at street level in direct mortal danger, and caused massive material destruction … in the explosion he killed the following eight people …