TORONTO – Norway’s prison terms are “pathetic,” confessed mass killer Anders Breivik declared today in court, claiming the death penalty or a full acquittal were the “only logical outcomes” for his massacre of 77 people.
The right-wing fanatic said he doesn’t fear death and that militant nationalists in Europe have a lot to learn from al-Qaida, including their methods and glorification of martyrdom.
Breivik says the logical punishment for his massacre of 77 people would be either the death penalty or an acquittal and calls the maximum prison term in Norway of 21 years is “pathetic.”
Last week, a psychiatric assessment found Breivik not criminally insane, contradicting an earlier assessment.
Back in July, a 1,500-page manifesto revealed Breivik styles himself as a Christian conservative, patriot and nationalist. Despite his own anti-Muslim views, he looks down on neo-Nazis as “underprivileged racist skinheads with a short temper.”
Breivik has previously called his upbringing in a middle-class home in Oslo privileged, even though his parents divorced when he was 1 and he lost contact with his father in his teens. His parents split when the family lived in London, where his father, Jens Breivik, was a diplomat at the Norwegian Embassy in London. A spokesman for the embassy, Stein Iversen, confirmed that Jens Breivik was employed at the embassy in the late 1970s, but wouldn’t discuss his relationship with the Oslo confessed mass killer.
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Breivik said both parents supported Norway’s centre-left Labor Party, which he viewed as infiltrated by Marxists.
His mother won a custody battle, but Breivik said he regularly visited his father and his new wife in France, where they lived, until his father cut off contact when Breivik was 15. The father told Norwegian newspaper VG that they lost touch in 1995, but that it was his son who wanted to cut off contact.
“We’ve never lived together, but we had some contact in his childhood,” the older Breivik, who VG said is now retired in France, was quoted as saying. “When he was young he was an ordinary boy, but reclusive. He wasn’t interested in politics at the time.”
In his manifesto, Breivik said he had no negative experiences from his childhood, though he had issues with his mother being a “moderate feminist.”
“I do not approve of the super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing though as it completely lacked discipline and has contributed to feminize me to a certain degree,” he said.
But Breivik claims he never lacked courage: “If anyone threatened me or my friends, regardless if we were at a disadvantage, we would rather face our foes than submit and lose face.”He said that attitude was atypical among ethnic Norwegians, who had a tendency to “sissy out.”
Breivik, who detailed his preparations for the attacks in eerie detail, also anticipated the hostility he would face, even from his friends and family, if he survived his “mission” and was brought to trial.
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