Prosecutors ask for Norway attacks hearing to be closed to public
Oslo District Court spokeswoman Irene Ramm has said government lawyers will request eight weeks of pre-trial detention for the Norway attacks suspect so they can prepare their case.
A pre-trial detention usually lasts four weeks.
Prosecutors will also ask for Anders Behring Breivik's hearing to be closed to the public and media.
The man who confessed to the twin attacks that killed 93 people in Norway is appearing in court for the first time today and has requested an open hearing so that he can explain his massacre to the public.
Anders Behring Breivik, 32, has confessed he was behind the bombing in downtown Oslo and shooting massacre at a youth camp outside the capital, but denies criminal responsibility.
His lawyer Geir Lippestad told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that Breivik has requested to appear in a uniform during the hearing, but did not know what kind.
The search for victims continues and police have not released their names. But Norway’s royal court said today that those killed at the island retreat included crown princess Mette-Marit’s stepbrother, an off-duty police officer, who was working there as a security guard.
Court spokeswoman Marianne Hagen said his name was Trond Berntsen, the son of Mette-Marit’s stepfather, who died in 2008.
Breivik laid out his extreme nationalist philosophy as well as his attack methods in a 1,500-page manifesto. It also describes how he bought armour, guns, tons of fertiliser and other bomb components, stashed caches of weapons and wiped his computer hard drive – all while evading police suspicion and being nice to his neighbours.
The attacks rattled Norway, a small and wealthy country unused to political violence, and known internationally as a peace mediator, prominent foreign aid donor and as home of the Nobel Peace Prize. Survivors of the camp shooting on the Utoya island described how a gunman dressed in a police uniform urged people to come closer and then opened fire, sending panicked youth fleeing into the water.
Police say 86 people were killed. About 90 minutes earlier, a car bomb exploded in the government district in central Oslo, killing seven.
More than 90 people were wounded, and others remain missing at both crime scenes.
Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, without citing sources, reported that Breivik told investigators that he had hoped to reach the island while former prime minister Harlem Brundtland was visiting the youth camp of Norway’s left-leaning Labour Party, but got there after she had left. Oslo police spokesman Henning Holtaas declined to comment on the report.
Dr Colin Poole, head of surgery at Ringriket Hospital in Honefoss, north-west of Oslo, said the gunman used special bullets designed to disintegrate inside the body and cause maximum internal damage. Poole said surgeons treating 16 gunshot victims have recovered no full bullets.
“These bullets more or less exploded inside the body,” Dr Poole said. “It’s caused us all kinds of extra problems in dealing with the wounds they cause, with very strange trajectories.”
Ballistics experts say “dum-dum”-style bullets also are lighter in weight and can be fired with greater accuracy over varying distances.
