Anders Behring Breivik on Tuesday defended his massacre of 77 people, insisting he would do it again and calling the bomb-and-shooting rampage the most “spectacular” attack by a nationalist militant since World War II.
Reading a prepared statement in court, the anti-Muslim extremist lashed out at Norwegian and European governments for embracing immigration and multiculturalism.
He claimed to be speaking as a commander of an “anti-communist” resistance movement and an anti-Islam militant group he called the Knights Templar. Prosecutors have said the group does not exist.
Maintaining he acted out of “goodness not evil” to prevent a wider civil war, Breivik vowed, “I would have done it again.”
Breivik has five days to explain why he set off a bomb in Oslo’s government district, killing eight, and then gunned down 69 at a Labor Party youth camp outside the Norwegian capital. He denies criminal guilt saying he was acting in self-defense.
“The attacks on July 22 were a preventive strike. I acted in self-defense on behalf of my people, my city, my country,” he said as he finished his statement Tuesday. “I therefore demand to be found innocent of the present charges.”
(Source: NY Daily News)