The 18 year-old attacker who killed nine people in Munich on July 22 was obsessed with mass shootings and had an obvious link to Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, German police say.
Police who searched the gunman’s room say they found written material on attacks.
The young man, who later killed himself, had a 9mm Glock pistol and 300 bullets.
Police are investigating whether he may have lured his victims through a Facebook invitation to a restaurant.
The man is suspected of using a fake account under a girl’s name to invite people to the McDonald’s restaurant where he launched his attack.
Anders Breivik murdered 77 people in Norway on July 22, 2011, killing eight with a bomb in the capital Oslo before shooting dead 69 at a summer camp for young centre-left political activists on the island of Utoya.
Now 37, Anders Breivik is held in solitary confinement in Norway after being sentenced to 21 years in 2012. He recently won an appeal against the tough regime of his incarceration.
Photo AFP
Breivik harbored radical right-wing views and said his attack was aimed at stopping Muslim immigration to Europe.
Yesterday’s attack at Munich’s Olympia shopping mall also left 27 people injured, including children.
Seven of the dead were teenagers. Three victims were from Kosovo, three from Turkey and one from Greece.
According to police, the gunman had been in psychiatric care, receiving treatment for depression.
“We are in deep mourning… we share your grief,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel after chairing a meeting of the national security council.
Flags are to be flown at half-mast across Germany in mourning
Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said there was an “obvious” link between the new attack and yesterday’s fifth anniversary of Anders Breivik’s attacks in Norway, when he murdered 77 people.
A spokesman for the Munich prosecutor, Thomas Steinkraus-Koch, said the killer might have been receiving psychiatric care.
“We are assuming that he may have suffered from depression,” he said.
“As far as we know he has no criminal record. In 2012 and 2010 he was a victim of an attack – on one occasion he was beaten by three young offenders.”
Hubertus Andrae warned the number of injured could increase if people who had fled the scene came forward. Ten people were critically ill, including a 13-year-old boy, he said.
First reports of the shooting came in just before 18:00 local time on July 22.
Witnesses say the attacker opened fire on members of the public in Hanauer Street before moving on to the shopping mall.
A grainy video appears to show a man firing a gun outside McDonald’s as people flee.
Another video shows the gunman walking around alone on a flat roof before again opening fire. He can be heard shouting at the person filming, saying at one point: “I’m German.”
Police said the gunman was a dual German-Iranian national who was born in Munich. His name has not been released.
The attacker’s body was found about half a mile from the mall. He had no known links to ISIS, police said.
Police have ruled out any connection to ISIS.
Fears of a new ISIS attack had been high just four days after a teenage Afghan asylum seeker stabbed and injured five people on a train in Bavaria before being shot dead by police.
Claiming the attack, ISIS later released a video showing the 17-year-old brandishing a knife and making threats.
Anders Behring Breivik has won part of a human rights case against the Norwegian state.
The court upheld the mass murderer’s claim that some of his treatment amounted to “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
After the judgement, Anders Breivik’s lawyer, Oystein Storrvik, called for his solitary confinement to be repealed.
Anders Breivik, a right-wing extremist, killed dozens of young center-left political activists in an attack on the island of Utoya in July 2011.
Earlier that day, he set off a car bomb in Oslo, killing eight people.
In her ruling, judge Helen Andenaes Sekulic said the right not to be subjected to inhuman treatment represented “a fundamental value in a democratic society” and also applied to “terrorists and killers”.
Photo Getty Images
Anders Breivik had challenged the government over his solitary confinement, which saw him kept alone in his cell for 22 to 23 hours a day, denied contact with other inmates and only communicating with prison staff through a thick glass barrier.
His prison regime deviated so markedly from that enforced upon any other prisoner in Norway, regardless of the severity of their crimes, that it had to be considered an extra punishment, Judge Sekulic said.
However, article three of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) required that prisoners be detained in conditions that did not exceed the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in detention, given the practical requirements of the particular case, the judge said.
The prison authorities had also not done enough to counteract the damage Anders Breivik had suffered from being in isolation, she said.
The judge also noted that Anders Breivik had been woken up every half hour at night over a long period of time and on some occasions subjected to strip searches with female officers present, which he found particularly difficult.
“Taken together with the other stringent restrictions which he was subject, this was regarded as degrading treatment in the Convention sense,” Judge Sekulic said, according to NRK .
State lawyer Marius Emberland said the government was surprised by the verdict but had not decided whether to appeal.
If neither side appeals against the judgement within four weeks, the prison is obliged to make Anders Breivik’s prison regime more lenient in line with the judge’s remarks, NRK reported.
The prison must work to bring in other prisoners and “facilitate a community”, the judge said.
However, Judge Sekulic ruled that strict controls on Anders Breivik’s correspondence were justified and his right to a private and family life under article eight of the ECHR had not been violated.
The court also ordered the Norwegian state to pay Anders Breivik’s legal costs of 330,000 kroner ($40,000).
Bjorn Ihler, a survivor of Anders Breivik’s massacre of young activists on Utoya, tweeted that the judgement in Breivik’s favor showed Norway had a “working court system, respecting human rights even under extreme conditions”.
Anders Behring Breivik has given a Nazi salute upon his return to court to accuse the government of violating his human rights by holding him in isolation.
The Norwegian mass murderer has compared his conditions in prison to “torture”.
Anders Breivik, 37, killed 77 people in 2011 when he bombed central Oslo before going on a shooting spree at a Labour Youth camp on the island of Utoya.
The right-wing extremist was sentenced to 21 years in prison in 2012.
Entering the court in a grey suit shortly before 09:00 Anders Breivik shook hands with his lawyers. He made the salute after police removed his handcuffs.
Anders Breivik accuses the Norwegian government of breaching two clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights.
One of the clauses guarantees the right to respect for “private and family life” and “correspondence” and the other prohibits “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.
Photo Reuters
His lawyer, Oystein Storrvik, told AFP news agency that Anders Breivik had been “very stressed due to his isolation” in Skien prison, about 60 miles south-west of the capital Oslo.
“One of his main things to do (in prison) was to study and he has stopped that now, and I feel that is a sign that isolation has been negative to his psychological health,” he said.
Authorities say Anders Breivik’s correspondence is censored to stop him setting up an “extremist network”. His visits are almost all with professionals across a glass partition.
The attorney general’s office has insisted that Anders Breivik’s prison conditions are “well within the limits of what is permitted” under the convention.
The court hearing, which is being held in the gymnasium of Skien prison, is expected to run until Friday.
Anders Breivik is expected to testify on March 16.
If the court decides that Anders Breivik’s prison conditions are so strict that they cause him harm and violate his human rights, it could order an easing of restrictions.
In September 2015, Anders Breivik threatened to starve himself to death in protest at his treatment in prison.
His cell at Skien prison has a TV and computer but he has no access to the internet.
In a letter to media outlets in Norway and Sweden, Anders Breivik said he was kept in almost total isolation, with time outside his cell limited to one hour a day.
The mass murderer said the harsh prison conditions had forced him to drop out of a political science course at the University of Oslo.
Anders Breivik was first held at Ila Detention and Security Prison near Oslo before being moved to Skien in 2013.
At Ila, he also complained of being held in “inhumane” conditions.
In a letter to prison authorities, Anders Breivik said his cell was poorly decorated and had no view.
Anders Breivik also complained that his coffee was served cold, he did not have enough butter for his bread, and he was not allowed moisturizer.
Jens Breivik, the father of jailed Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, has written a book expressing feelings of guilt and responsibility over his son’s actions.
Anders Behring Breivik admitted killing 77 people when he bombed central Oslo and then went on a shooting spree at a youth camp on nearby Utoeya island in 2011.
His parents separated when Anders was a year old and Jens Breivik claims to have had little contact with his son.
Entitled My Fault? A Father’s Story, the book is set for release in October.
“I feel some guilt and I feel some responsibility. What would have happened if I had been a better father? Would Anders have done what he did?” Jens Breivik wrote, according to an excerpt of the book released by the publisher Juritzen.
A retired Norwegian diplomat living in southern France, Jens Breivik wrote the book with the help of a ghost writer and is expected to question his behavior as a parent and his role in the life of the radical far-right killer.
Jens Breivik has written a book expressing feelings of guilt and responsibility over son Anders’ actions
In 2012, Anders Breivik was sentenced to the maximum 21 years in prison for carrying out the country’s worst peacetime massacre in its modern history.
Anders Breivk harbored extremist right-wing views and claimed he had reacted against what he saw as a Marxist-Islamic takeover of Europe.
His deadly rampage against a Labor Party youth camp on Utoeya island was found by an Oslo court to have been a premeditated act of terrorism.
Anders Breivik’s jail term can be extended if he is deemed to remain a danger to society.
Jens Breivik has often been described as an absent father after the separation from his wife. At the time of the separation, Jens Breivik attempted to win custody over Anders but was unsuccessful, and he lost touch with his son when Anders was a teenager.
A previous book about Anders Breivik’s late mother, Wenche, portrayed Jens Breivik as a domestic tyrant.
During the murder investigation and trial, it emerged that Norwegian social services had suspected Anders Breivik was neglected at home as a child.
According to the editor of My Fault? A Father’s Story, Arve Juritzen, the book is a form of self-trial for Jens Breivik.
Jens Breivik has re-established contact his son in the last two years but has not shared the manuscript with him.
Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian convicted of the massacre of 77 people last year, has said he is being held in “inhumane” conditions.
Anders Behring Breivik complained in a letter to the prison service that his coffee is served cold, he does not have enough butter for his bread, and he is not allowed moisturizer.
He is serving a minimum 21-year sentence for the bombings and shootings in Oslo and Utoeya island last July.
The Norwegian authorities have not commented on the letter.
However, his lawyer has confirmed that the details of the 27-page document leaked to Norway’s VG newspaper are authentic.
Anders Behring Breivik is being held in almost complete isolation – 23 hours a day, he says – at Ila prison outside Oslo.
His cell includes three sections, one to sleep, one for study and a third for exercise – each measuring 8 sq m (86 sq ft).
Anders Behring Breivik complained in a letter to the prison service that his coffee is served cold, he does not have enough butter for his bread, and he is not allowed moisturizer
In the letter, he complains that the cell is poorly decorated and has no view.
“I highly doubt that there are worse detention facilities in Norway,” he writes.
Among his other complaints are:
• the handcuffs he wears when being moved around the prison “are too sharp and “cut in his wrist”
• the cell is too cold, forcing him to wear three layers of clothes
• he has to rush his morning shave and brushing of teeth
• light and television switches are outside the cell, so he has to ask for help to change channel or sleep.
Ila is an all-male institution which “houses some of the country’s most dangerous men”, its website says.
However, it differs markedly from other maximum security jails in western Europe. The staff is a half-and-half mix of men and women and none are armed.
Anders Behring Breivik massacred 77 people, most of them teenagers at a youth camp run by Norway’s governing Labour Party.
His 21-year sentence can be indefinitely extended for as long as he is considered a danger to society.
Czech police have arrested a man they suspect of planning an attack similar to those launched by Anders Bering Breivik in Norway.
Weapons, explosives and police uniforms were found in his flat in the city of Ostrava and detectives say he was using the name Breivik on the internet.
The man has five convictions, one for blowing up a wooden shack near a petrol station, police say.
Neighbors told Czech media he was not an extremist but mentally unhinged.
Police searched the man’s apartment on 10 August but have only now disclosed details of what was found.
Weapons, explosives and police uniforms were found in suspect’s flat in Ostrava and detectives say he was using the name Breivik on the internet
Police raided the property after being tipped off that he was planning to detonate a large explosive device crafted from an aircraft bomb.
He was reportedly carrying a remote-controlled detonator when he was arrested.
At a news conference, police said they did not know the suspect’s intended target, but said the explosives, weapons and ammunition were all functional.
The director of the regional headquarters of the Czech police, Tomas Tuhy, said they were investigating any possible connection with Anders Breivik.
“We are working with the idea that this 29-year-old man probably sympathises with known murderer Anders Breivik from Norway,” he said.
A photograph in the Czech media shows a smiling young man with a receding hairline and a neatly trimmed beard, being led away in handcuffs.
On 22 July 2011, Anders Bering Breivik, a right-wing militant, killed eight people in a bomb attack in Oslo before gunning down another 69 in a youth camp on the island of Utoeya.
Judges are set to decide next week whether he is sane or insane, and therefore whether he will be given a long prison sentence or be sent to a secure psychiatric ward.
Norway is today commemorating one year since 77 people were killed and 242 hurt in gun and bomb attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utoeya.
Church services, a concert and other events are being held around Norway.
PM Jens Stoltenberg will lay wreaths and is expected to be joined by hundreds of people on Utoeya, including the families of those who were killed.
Anders Behring Breivik, who has admitted carrying out the two attacks, remains on trial.
Most of the dead were young activists with the Labour Party who had been staying on Utoeya as part of a summer camp.
Thousands of people are expected to gather in Oslo for a day of events, including a memorial service at the city’s cathedral.
Norway is commemorating one year since 77 people were killed and 242 hurt in gun and bomb attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utoeya
Jens Stoltenberg will lay a wreath at the site of the Oslo bombing at 09:30 and then travel to Utoeya to give a speech to Labour Party youth, before laying a wreath there at 18:45 – the time Anders Breivik was arrested a year ago.
In the evening there will be a national memorial concert with mainly Norwegian musicians.
Many of the buildings that were damaged in the bomb attack have not yet been fully repaired.
The prime minister’s office and the ministry of health buildings are still covered in plastic.
The attacks, regarded as the worst act of violence in Norway since World War II, sparked a national debate about the nature of tolerance and democracy in the country.
Anders Breivik, who has been on trial for three months, has tried to justify the attacks by claiming he was trying to stop Muslims from taking over Norway.
But the government, and much of the population, have actively promoted tolerance and openness to counter Anders Breivik’s views.
“I think that people thought it a bit naive to cling to these values of openness in a situation like that,” said Vegard Groeslie Wennesland, a Labour Party activist who survived the attack.
“But I think it’s more naive to think that brutal police, or more restrictive policies will bring you a safer society.”
Judges are to announce next month whether Anders Breivik is sane or insane, and therefore whether he will be given a long prison sentence or be sent to a secure psychiatric ward.
The fourth day of Norway’s trial of the century begins with Anders Behring Breivik telling the court he originally planned to detonate three car bombs.
The sole car bomb Anders Breivik did set off killed eight people in Oslo. The mass killer said he decided against multiple bombs because building them was “more difficult than [he] had thought”.
Anders Breivik disputed a psychiatrist’s report describing him as insane.
Earlier, he told the court he took a year off to play World of Warcraft.
Anders Breivik described using computer games to rehearse scenarios before setting off the car bomb outside a government building in the Norwegian capital on 22 July 2011.
He said his initial targets for the three bombs were government headquarters, Labour Party offices and the royal castle, but not the royal family itself.
The fourth day of Norway’s trial of the century begins with Anders Behring Breivik telling the court he originally planned to detonate three car bombs
Anders Breivik followed his car bomb attack with a mass shooting at a Labour Party summer camp on Utoeya island, killing 69 people, many of them teenagers.
He told prosecutors he came up with idea of targeting Utoeya when it became clear that it was impossible to make more than one bomb.
Anders Breivik said he decided to choose one target for a bomb and one “based on a firing operation”.
He also considered a congress of journalists and the Labour Party summer conference.
Anders Breivik described how he joined a gun club in 2010 as part of his preparations.
He told the court he had begun planning a “suicide action” as far back as 2006.
He had expected he would have to fight his way out of the scene of the bombing and estimated his chance of survival at 5%, he said.
However, the prosecution asserted Anders Breivik began preparing his attacks no earlier than 2009.
Arriving in court, Anders Breivik made no far-right salute, unlike previous days. His lawyers had asked him not to salute.
He is behaving differently from his irritable performance on Wednesday: he is answering most of the questions put to him and seems calm.
Anders Breivik has admitted the killings but denies criminal responsibility, saying he acted to protect Norway and Europe from multiculturalism.
“Militant nationalists in Europe are divided,” Anders Breivik told the court on Thursday.
“Half of them think we should attack Muslims and minorities, the other half that we should attack elites, those responsible, and hold them accountable.”
In other points so far, Anders Breivik said:
• he was 15 when he became skeptical of Muslim immigration, and 18 or 19 when he first thought about committing violence
• he named his manifesto 2083 to represent the 400th anniversary of the Battle of Vienna, when the Ottoman Turks were defeated
• he named the guns he used in the Utoeya shootings after characters in Norse mythology
• he joined the Masons as soon as he was old enough because they were a “Christian organization that protects its members”
• he took a year’s “sabbatical” from business activities in 2006 because he was planning the “suicide action”
• he spent the year playing the online role-play game, World of Warcraft, for up to 16 hours a day
The court heard that Anders Breivik formed a company in the Bahamas that he used as a front for money-laundering. The funds were intended for nationalist activities.
The court is seeking to determine whether Anders Breivik is sane. If so, he will be jailed for at least 21 years, although that sentence can be extended by the courts.
If he is deemed insane, he will be committed to a psychiatric institution.
Survivor Bjorn Ihler, who was on Utoeya island when Anders Breivik went on his shooting spree, said it was getting “easier and easier” to see him in the dock.
“All the things he did and said disarms him in so many ways… he gets less and less dangerous in my mind,” Bjorn Ihler said.
Anders Breivik’s evidence is scheduled to last five days, concluding on Monday.
Anders Behring Breivik, the man who carried out a bomb and gun attack in Norway last year that left 77 people dead, has gone on trial in Oslo.
Anders Breivik attacked a summer youth camp organized by the governing Labour party on the island of Utoeya, after setting off a car bomb in the capital.
He gave a closed-fist salute, and said he did not recognize the court because it was dependent on political parties who supported multiculturalism.
Anders Breivik has confessed to the killings, but denies criminal responsibility.
If the court decides he is criminally insane, he will be committed to psychiatric care; if he is judged to be mentally stable, he will be jailed.
In the latter case, he faces a sentence of 21 years, which could be extended to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.
Anders Breivik gave a closed-fist salute, and said he did not recognize the court because it was dependent on political parties who supported multiculturalism
Dressed in a dark suit, Anders Breivik smiled as he entered the courtroom and a guard removed his handcuffs. He then gave a closed-fist salute.
Anders Breivik later told the lead judge: “I do not recognize the Norwegian courts. You have received your mandate from political parties which support multiculturalism. I do not acknowledge the authority of the court.”
The judge noted the objection, which Anders Breivik’s lawyer said was not an official one, and said the lawyer could follow up on the matter in his opening arguments.
The prosecutor then read the names of all the victims of the attacks last July, describing in detail how each person was killed or injured.
Anders Breivik showed no emotion, looking down at a folder on the table in front of him.
During the 10-week trial, prosecutors will paint a detailed picture of how one man planned and then carried out mass murder.
Anders Breivik has already confessed to the attacks – first the car bombing outside government buildings in Oslo which killed eight people, and then the shooting spree at a political youth camp on Utoeya.
He is expected to plead not guilty, arguing that the Labour party was a “legitimate target” because it supports immigration and multiculturalism – policies he says will bring about a Muslim takeover of Europe.
With Anders Breivik not expected to express any remorse for his actions, his trial promises to be an ordeal for the families of those killed and for those who survived the attacks.
Jorid Nordmelan, a survivor of the Utoeya massacre, said she would be in court to hear Anders Breivik testify.
“It’s a historical date for Norwegians,” she said.
“We never had a trial like this, so we don’t know what’s going to happen.
“Prosecutors told me they were going to make the opening statements awful, so that people can just feel what he did right there.”
Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been found sane enough to face trial and a jail term after a second psychiatric evaluation.
The findings contradict a previous evaluation, published in November, that found him legally insane.
Anders Breivik, 33, is due to stand trial on Monday over a bomb attack and shooting spree last July that killed 77 people.
He insists he is mentally stable and was “pleased” with the new assessment, his lawyer said.
Geir Lippestad told reporters his client would defend his actions during his 10-week trial, adding, “he will also regret that he didn’t go further”.
Both reports will be considered by the court when it decides, at the end of the trial, whether he should be sent to a psychiatric ward or jail.
If Anders Breivik is deemed to have been sane at the time of the killings then he could face 21 years in prison with the potential for indefinite extensions to his term as long as he is considered a danger to the public.
Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik has been found sane enough to face trial and a jail term after a second psychiatric evaluation
The second evaluation was approved by a court in January following widespread criticism of last year’s assessment that concluded he was psychotic at the time of the attacks and diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic – meaning he would most likely be detained in psychiatric care.
Many of his surviving victims believed he was sane, and that the only proper punishment would be a prison sentence.
“Our conclusion is that he was not psychotic at the time of the actions of terrorism and he is not psychotic now,” psychiatrist Terje Toerrissen, who carried out the second assessment with fellow psychiatrist Agnar Aspaas, told the Associated Press.
The full report is confidential, and the two psychiatrists will give their reasons for arriving at a different conclusion to the first team of experts when they testify during the trial, AP reports.
Anders Breivik was charged with terror offences last month.
Prosecutors said at the time they were prepared to accept that he was criminally insane and would therefore seek compulsory psychiatric care, but they reserved the right to alter that view if new elements emerged about his mental health.
Anders Breivik has always admitted carrying out the attacks, saying they were an atrocious but necessary part of a “crusade” against multi-culturalism and Islam. He denies charges of terrorism.
In a recent letter to Norwegian tabloid Verdans Gang, Anders Breivik said being sent to a psychiatric ward would be a “fate worse than death”.
“To send a political activist to an asylum is more sadistic and more evil than killing him!” he wrote.
The attacks on July 22, 2011, were the worst act of violence Norway has seen since World War II, and have had a profound impact on the country.
Anders Breivik disguised himself as a police officer to plant a car bomb that exploded close to government offices in Oslo, killing eight people and wounding 209.
Still in uniform, he then drove to the island of Utoeya, where a summer youth camp of Norway’s governing Labour Party was being held.
In a shooting spree that lasted more than an hour, he killed 67 people – mostly teenagers – and wounded 33, while a further two people died falling or drowning.
According to prosecutors, nearly 900 people were affected by the two attacks – 325 in Oslo and 564 on Utoeya.
• Eight people killed and 209 injured by bomb in Oslo
• 69 people killed on Utoeya, of them 34 aged between 14 and 17
• 33 injured on Utoeya
• Nearly 900 people affected by attacks
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