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BREIVIK

Walkout at Oslo trial as Breivik speaks

Survivors and relatives of the 77 people Anders Behring Breivik killed in Norway last July walked out of the courtroom on Friday as he began making final remarks on the last day of his trial.

Walkout at Oslo trial as Breivik speaks
Trond Henry Blattmann and Christin Bjelland lead the protestors out of the courtroom (Photo: Stian Lysberg Solum/Scanpix)

More than 30 people stood up and walked out of courtroom 250 at the Oslo district court when lead judge Wenche Arntzen said it was time for Breivik to speak.

"He has a right to talk. We have no duty to listen," Christian Bjelland, the vice chair of the support group for survivors of the July 22nd attacks and victims' families, told the NTB news agency.

Breivik has asked the court to give him an hour to make final comments, in addition to the several days at the beginning of the 10-week trial dedicated to his testimony.

"Listening to him makes us sick, so many of us intend, when he is given a chance to talk, to calmly and quietly walk out," Bjelland said before the protest action.

Earlier on the last trial day, 11 months to the day after Breivik's attacks, his main lawyer Geir Lippestad rejected a prosecution call for him to be shut in a psychiatric ward, insisting the confessed killer was sane and should be sent to prison or set free.

Shortly before Breivik took the stand, the Oslo district court had also heard heart-wrenching testimony from five people who lost a loved one in the July 22nd attacks.

That day, Breivik first set off a car bomb outside government buildings in Oslo, killing eight people, before going to Utøya island, north-west of the capital where he shot and killed another 69 people, mostly teenagers.

The victims, the youngest of whom had just celebrated her 14th birthday, had been attending a summer camp hosted by the governing Labour Party's youth organisation.

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BREIVIK

Norway mosque shooter ‘has admitted the facts’: Police

A Norwegian man suspected of killing his step sister and opening fire in a mosque near Oslo last weekend, has admitted to the crimes though he has not officially entered a plea, police said on Friday.

Norway mosque shooter 'has admitted the facts': Police
Philip Manshaus appears in court on August 12. Photo: Cornelius Poppe / NTB Scanpix / AFP
Philip Manshaus, 21, was remanded in custody Monday, suspected of murder and a “terrorist act” that police say he filmed himself committing.
   
Answering police questions on Friday, “the suspect admits the facts but has not taken a formal position as to the charges,” Oslo police official Pal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby said in a statement.
   
Manshaus is suspected of murdering his 17-year-old step sister Johanne Zhangjia Ihle-Hansen, before entering the Al-Noor mosque in an affluent Oslo suburb and opening fire before he was overpowered by a 65-year-old man.
   
Just three worshippers were in the mosque at the time, and there were no serious injuries.
   
Manshaus appeared in court this week with two black eyes and scrapes and bruises to his face, neck and hands.
   
Police have said he has “extreme right views” and “xenophobic positions” and that he had filmed the mosque attack with a camera mounted on a helmet. He had initially denied the accusations.
   
The incident came amid a rise in white supremacy attacks around the world, including the recent El Paso massacre in the United States.
   
Norway witnessed one of the worst-ever attacks by a rightwing extremist in July 2011, when Anders Behring Breivik, who said he feared a “Muslim invasion”, killed 77 people in a truck bomb blast near government offices in Oslo and a shooting spree at a Labour Party youth camp on the island of Utøya.