/ 31 July 2011

German security fears Norway copycats

German Security Fears Norway Copycats

The recent mass killing in Norway could easily serve as a blueprint for other anti-Muslim militants, one of Germany’s top security officials warned in a magazine interview on Sunday.

Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in bombing and gun attacks in Norway on July 22 and left detailed instructions on the internet of how he planned the bloodshed without attracting much police attention.

“This could serve as a blueprint for copycats,” Alexander Eisvogel, vice-president of Germany’s domestic anti-terrorist agency, the Federal Agency for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), told the news magazine Der Spiegel.

“From the point of view of a terrorist, he has meticulously and carefully considered how to avoid coming into the view of the security services. This … is an extreme concern for us right now,” Eisvogel said.

The leader of Germany’s main opposition party, Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel, urged German security services and internet service providers to take tougher action against online right-wing extremism.

“If someone on the street in Germany … said he wanted to persecute other people or even commit attacks, then the public would report him to the police,” Gabriel told Deutschlandfunk radio.

“On the internet it’s amazingly different. There, insults and even calls to murder are treated as a type of eccentric by-product of freedom.”

Identified and accounted for
Police raised the death toll to 77, from 76, and said all those killed in the July 22 terror attacks in Oslo and on Utøya have now been identified and those reported missing have been accounted for.

Norway’s Police Security Service said the threat from right-wing extremists remains unchanged after Anders Behring Breivik’s attack. It said the 32-year-old Norwegian’s actions lack parallels in Europe or elsewhere, his views differ from the ideology of most racist and neo-Nazi groups, and very few people in Norway are capable of replicating what he did.

Since the massacre, questions have persisted about whether authorities had underestimated extremist dangers in Norway.

At Friday’s memorial service in Oslo at the assembly hall of the “People’s House,” a community centre for Norway’s labour movement, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said: “Today it is one week since Norway was hit by evil.”

The bullets struck dozens of members of the youth faction of his Labour Party, but they were aimed at the entire nation, Stoltenberg said, on a stage adorned with red roses, the symbol of his party.

“I think July 22 will be a very strong symbol of the Norwegian people’s wish to be united in our fight against violence, and will be a symbol of how the nation can answer with love,” he told reporters after the ceremony.

Members of the audience raised bouquets of flowers as each speaker took the stage, and some of them fought back tears as they spoke.

Unity
Breivik, a vehement anti-Muslim, was questioned by police Friday for the second time since surrendering to an anti-terror squad on Utøya, where his victims lay strewn across the shore and in the water. Many were teens who were gunned down as they tried to flee the onslaught.

In a 1500-page manifesto released just before the attacks, Breivik ranted about Europe being overrun by Muslim immigrants and blamed left-wing political forces for making the continent multicultural.

Police attorney Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby said the Breivik remained calm and cooperative during the questioning session, in which investigators reviewed with him his statements from an earlier session on Saturday. Investigators believe Breivik acted alone, after years of meticulous planning, and haven’t found anything to support his claims that he’s part of an anti-Muslim militant network plotting a series of coups d’etat across Europe.

Police also said they have identified all of the victims, 68 of whom were killed on the island and eight who died after a car bomb exploded in downtown Oslo. Breivik has confessed to both attacks but denies criminal guilt because he believes he’s in a state of war, his lawyer and police have said.

Police have charged Breivik with terrorism, which carries a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison. However, it’s possible the charge will change during the investigation to crimes against humanity, which carries a 30-year prison term, Norway’s top prosecutor Tor-Aksel Busch told the Associated Press. — Reuters
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