Norway mass killer Anders Behring Breivik wanted to behead former prime minister during massacre

Self-confessed mass killer and right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik is seen at the central court in Oslo, Norway, April 19, 2012. / AFP/Getty Images

Updated at 9:10 a.m. ET

(AP) OSLO, Norway - Confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik testified Thursday that he had planned to capture and decapitate former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland during his shooting massacre on Utoya island.

Breivik said his plan was to film the beheading and post the video on the Internet. Brundtland had already left the Labor Party's youth camp on Utoya when Breivik arrived on July 22, after setting off a bomb in Oslo that killed eight people.

Sixty-nine people, mostly teenagers, were killed on Utoya, where nearly 600 members of the Labor Party's youth wing had gathered for their annual summer retreat.

"The plan was to behead Gro Harlem Brundtland while it was being filmed," Breivik told the court.

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The far-right fanatic said he was inspired by al Qaeda's use of decapitation but noted that "beheading is a traditional European death penalty."

"It was meant to be used as a very powerful psychological weapon," he said.

Brundtland was prime minister for the Labor Party for 10 years. She later headed the World Health Organization and was appointed as a U.N. climate change envoy in 2007.

"Gro Harlem Brundtland has no comment on the information provided by Breivik, nor the court case in general," her adviser Jon Moerland told The Associated Press.

On the fourth day of his trial in Oslo on terror charges, Breivik spoke at ease about Norway's worst peacetime massacre, describing the victims as "traitors" and showing no sign of remorse.

"The goal was not to kill 69 people on Utoya. The goal was to kill them all," Breivik said.

The 33-year-old Norwegian said his original plans were to set off three bombs in Oslo, including at the royal palace, but building just one fertilizer bomb turned out to be "much more difficult than I thought."

"I settled on the palace in a setting where the royal family wouldn't be hurt," he said. "Most nationalists and cultural conservatives are supporters of the monarchy, including myself."

"When I reached a situation where it was impossible to make more than one bomb, it resulted in a strategy of one bomb and one shooting-based action," he said.

His preferred targets for the shooting massacre were an annual conference of Norwegian journalists or the Labor Party's annual meeting. But he couldn't get prepared in time, so he decided on striking against the summer retreat of the Labor Party's youth wing.

Breivik said he had expected to be confronted by armed police when he left Oslo for Utoya island. He killed 69 people there, armed with a handgun and a rifle — both named after Norse gods.

"I estimated the chances of survival as less than 5 percent," he said.

Breivik, who styles himself as a modern-day crusader, has confessed to the attacks but rejects criminal guilt, saying he was acting to protect Norway and Europe by targeting left-wing political forces he claims have betrayed the country by opening it up to immigration.

"Militant nationalists are split in two," Breivik said Thursday. "One half says you should attack Muslims and minorities. The other half says you should attack elites, those who are responsible."

The key issue of the trial is to establish whether he is criminally insane.

He entered the Oslo district court without the clenched-fist salute he had used in previous hearings.

In his testimony, Breivik said he played the computer game "Modern Warfare" for 16 months starting in January 2010, primarily to get a feel for how to use rifle sights.

Breivik said he decided already in 2006 to carry out what he expected to be a "suicide" operation. First he took a "sabbatical year" fully devoted to play another computer game, "World of Warcraft," for 16 hours a day.

Breivik said that cutting off social contact for a full year helped him prepare for the attacks, but the game-playing was "pure entertainment. It doesn't have anything to do with July 22."

Prosecutors challenged Breivik's assertion that he decided on an attack already in 2006, noting that his preparations for the attacks started in 2009, when he created an agricultural firm to buy chemicals for explosives.

Showing no sign of remorse, Breivik calmly answers questions from prosecutors, except when they ask about the alleged anti-Muslim "Knights Templar" network he claims to belong to. Prosecutors say they don't believe it exists.

When he smiled at one point during questioning Wednesday, Prosecutor Svein Holden asked him how he thought the bereaved watching the proceedings in court would react to that.

"They probably react in a natural way, with horror and disgust," Breivik said. He said he smiled because he knew where Holden was going with his line of questioning.

The main point of his defense is to avoid an insanity ruling, which would deflate his political arguments. He repeatedly accuses prosecutors of trying to "ridicule" him by highlighting portions of a rambling, 1,500-page manifesto he posted before the attacks.

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[tedleski]

I believe strongly that Anders Behring Breivik should be publicly castrated and left to bleed to death while tied to a pole in an open square with all media recording the event.

Its a shame that they don't have the death penalty in Norway.

I am an American, however, I am also a Satanist. I believe in an eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth, and do take gratification that in some parts of this great country you can lay discrete waste to someone with such a distasteful appreciation of human life.

Even if this were some sort of ritual sacrifice....it still would not hold up in our book. Because such sacrifice is done with strict and very private protocol so that no trace or evidence leading to any party involved could ever be found.

lol

[fredisalive]

same kind of people in this country passing as conservative republicans!

[fredisalive]

if you never thought that these rightwing wingnuts are not crazy here is your proof! We have a whole mess of them here in the US. Just give these wingnuts dresses, long beards and a headdress and you have yourself a taliban! You dont even need to modify their speech! LOL

[irreverentasever]

He's going to be the darling of his cellblock.

[crypticvalentin]

Remembrance
http://vimeo.com/27086831

[baileyccc]

Why are they letting him speak and why is CBS printing what he says? He needs to be put under the jail and the inmates should take care of him for the rest of us.

[pbaird2]

Twenty-one years maximum for murdering 69 human beings. The Norse have certainly changed.

[AnnieDanny]

This guy allowed himself some really sick fantasies. A trip through his thoughts would be one of the worst nightmares. He imagined doing things to real people, and then he went out and did it.

I wish CBS would stop putting his fantasies on the front page as news. Nobody wants to hear it or read it. His face is sickening.

[thelovegod]

Notice that his speech and Ted Nugent's are oddly similar in tone?

[Zann-Zel]

Good Point. No wonder the Secret Service is interviewing him!

[Resin-Smoker]

Odds are that it's very likely that he'll have an "accident" in prison. Running into someones shank multible times... poor bastard! (lol)