He admitted that those he had killed on the island were category C traitors.
‘Who decides which category people end up in?’
‘I’ve set it all out in my book. Strictly speaking, we are not authorised to execute category C traitors. Now, about my demands…’
His second demand was to use the PC for a minimum of eight hours a day. It need not have internet access, but there had to be a printer. ‘I am an intellectual. Not a warrior. My calling is to fight with the pen, but occasionally one has to use the sword.’ Demand number three was access to Wikipedia. Demand number four was to serve his sentence with as few Muslims as possible. Demand number five was not to be given any halal meat.
The officers in the next room communicated his demands to the police chiefs in Oslo, and the interviewers informed him that the demands would very probably be met. But they added that if there was to be an agreement, he must now tell them whether anyone was going to be killed in the imminent future.
‘Okay, if you agree to my most far-reaching list of demands I’m willing to hand over details of the two cells that right now, as we speak, are planning acts of terrorism against parties supporting multiculturalism.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Well then, the security services must present a proposal to the Justice Committee to bring in the death sentence, by hanging, in Norway, and to use waterboarding as a method of torture.’
Then he asked for a cigarette, and was given one. He asked for another drink and got that too.
‘It’s the media who are most to blame for what has happened today because they didn’t publish my views. One thus has to get the message out by other means.’ Then he suddenly said that the whole thing was tragic, and that his heart was weeping at what had happened that day.
‘You are the commander so the responsibility is yours,’ objected the interviewer.
‘My responsibility is to save Norway. I take full responsibility for everything out here, and I’m proud of the operation. If you only knew what hard work it’s been,’ he said. ‘It was bloody awful. I’ve been dreading this day for two years…’
The interrogation had already been going on for several hours when a team from Kripos arrived to carry out a preliminary examination of the accused. They took DNA and urine samples, and scrapings were taken from his clothes.
The officers produced a camera. But the Commander of the Norwegian anti-communist resistance movement objected to being photographed. He had already had pictures taken and had posted them on the internet. Now the police would take the sort of pictures he had warned about in his manifesto. Photos of an offender in handcuffs, with drooping shoulders. In the ones he had had taken at the studio he was in make-up and Photoshopped. They were portraits of him in his Freemasons’ suit, in his Knights Templar uniform, in his chemical protection suit. He had pasted the pictures into the final pages of his manifesto. No, there would be no Utøya photographs with AUF posters in the background. He would not have that.
But he was no longer the one making the decisions.
In the picture later leaked to the press, Breivik is sitting in an armchair with his hands in his lap. His head is bowed, his eyes fixed on the floor.
His clothes were to be secured, as they would be used as evidence. The Kripos men got out a black sack.
‘Get undressed.’
He refused.
They said he had to.
He refused again.
Then he suddenly leapt up and started tearing off his clothes.
‘Stop, stop!’
His garments were to be removed one at a time, at Kripos’s command. He could have explosives on him. Hidden weapons. It was the officers who would decide the order in which he was to remove the clothes, and when.
Finally he was standing there in a room of uniformed men in his underpants. He started posing, trying to look macho. Now he was all for having his picture taken. He looked into the camera and thrust out his chest. His hands were clasped at one hip while he held his body taut in a classic bodybuilding pose, to make his muscles bulge as much as possible.
For a moment, the policemen were nonplussed. In another setting, another crime, it might have been ridiculous, but here… it was grotesque, it was simply incomprehensible.
Who on earth were they dealing with here?
Breivik gave a nervous laugh. He had misjudged it. He could tell. The joke had fallen flat. The opportunity had presented itself out of the blue, and now that he was for once happy with his body, it had kind of been ready for a show. The Commander had temporarily forgotten himself.
He was issued with a disposable white jumpsuit and quickly put it on. The policemen found an old pair of shoes for him in the corridor. They could be the captain’s, or perhaps they belonged to one of the guards. Whoever they belonged to, he did not like them. But they were all he got.
The interrogation could continue.
‘You say we, so who are you, as a group?’
‘In Norway I’m the overall leader of our organisation. I’m the commander here. I’m the judge as well. I’m the supreme authority here. The international Knights Templar can’t micromanage its Norwegian commander. Today I sent out a document to thousands of militant nationalists. Some countries have got further than Norway. France, for example, will be taken over by my brothers within fifteen years, and once they have established a decent base it will be easy to get me released from prison.’
‘You said you were set up as an organisation in London in 2002. Have you been working towards this goal ever since then?’
‘To start with, I was a sleeping cell. I’ve never expressed extreme ideas until now. That’s why the PST hasn’t found me out. It’s people like me we want to recruit, people who are suitable, but who haven’t done anything to bring them to the attention of the police.’
He wanted to go out and pee again, and when he was brought back in he asked if anyone had any snus. Someone did. He was given a wad of snus and put it under his top lip.
It was past midnight.
‘My operation will go on,’ he said. ‘But by means of the pen. History will judge me. But it’s also a question of how the media judge me. I draw a distinction between success in the techniques of warfare and media success. The media certainly wants to portray me as a monster—’
‘Is it your aim to be portrayed as a monster?’
‘Not necessarily,’ he replied briskly. ‘The aim was not to be as brutal as I have been. When I evaluated people, I tried not to take the youngest. I took those who were older. There are moral boundaries, aren’t there? Even if I perhaps didn’t show that very clearly today.’
The night had reached its darkest point. Outside, the July night was chilly. A tent had been erected for the men who were now conducting a full search of the island.
‘How long will it actually take for me to get a response to my first list of demands?’ Breivik pestered them. ‘If I don’t get access to a PC with Word in prison, I shall terminate myself. If I have no chance of contributing to the struggle for the rest of my life, it will all be meaningless.’
‘How many do you think you killed today?’
‘Um, forty, or fifty. But they were executed, not murdered. The aim was to kill the party leaders of tomorrow. If the Labour Party alters its policy, I can guarantee there won’t be any more attacks on Norwegian soil. That is, I can practically guarantee it. Maybe I can guarantee it.’
The inspired thing about the choice of Utøya was that it was a knife blow to the heart of the Labour Party. ‘Of course it’s tragic if anyone has to die, but in the end it’s the big picture that matters. Of course it would have been much easier, say, to just kill Jens Stoltenberg. That would call for about a month’s surveillance. But for someone of my intellect and intelligence, it would be a waste of resources planning to kill only one person.’