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Anders Behring Breivik could have been halted – report Anders Behring Breivik could have been halted – report
(about 1 hour later)
Norwegian authorities could have prevented or interrupted the bomb and gun attacks by a far-right fanatic that killed 77 people last year, a government appointed commission has said. The Norwegian terror attacks which killed 77 in July last year could have been prevented or interrupted had police and the intelligence services not made a catalogue of blunders, according to an official report.
The long-awaited report into the attacks on 22 July also said the domestic intelligence service could have done more to track down the gunman, but stopped short of saying it could have stopped him. Despite receiving a detailed description of Anders Behring Breivik 10 minutes after he let off a car bomb in the centre of Oslo, a catastrophic breakdown in police communications meant the rightwing terrorist was able to make the two-hour car journey to Utøya Island, passing two police cars, before boarding a boat with several assault rifles and going on to murder 69 children and young people.
Anders Behring Breivik, 33, has admitted to the bombing of the government's headquarters in Oslo, which killed eight people, and the subsequent shooting spree at a youth camp that left 69 dead, more than half of them teenagers. He is currently awaiting sentencing. According to a 500-page report into the atrocity, the communications blunder – resulting in a note containing the description of Breivik being left on a table in the police operations room – was one of a series of failures which added to the death toll.
While noting that the attacks "may be the most shocking and incomprehensible acts ever experienced in Norway", the 500-page report said the bombing "could have been prevented" if already adopted security measures had been implemented more effectively. Alexandra Bech Gjørv, chairman the 22 July Commission, said a failure to mobilise helicopters, share information or accept help from private individuals prepared to drive boats to Utøya contributed to "the most inconceivable brutality".
Breivik was able to park a van with a fertiliser bomb just outside the high-rise building before he drove another car unhindered, to the Labour party's youth camp on Utøya. With better communication and individual decision making, police near Utøya could have got to the island by 6pm, preventing an additional 25 minutes of slaughter, she said.
The report said that a car bomb "at the government complex and several co-ordinated attacks have been recurring scenarios in threat assessments as well as for safety analyses and exercise scenarios for many years". Breivik might even have been stopped seven months before the attacks, had Norway's internal intelligence service, the PST, acted on a tip from customs officials who flagged a suspicious purchase of potential bomb-making chemicals from Poland.
The police response was also slowed down by a series of blunders, including flaws in communication systems and the breakdown of an overloaded boat carrying a police anti-terror unit. Meanwhile, Norway's only police helicopter was left unused, its crew on vacation. Breivik's shooting spree lasted for more than an hour before he surrendered to police. By December 2010, Breivik had already bought several semi-automatic assault rifles and was, said Gjørv, "highly visible on websites which must be called extreme".
The report said that a faster police response could have stopped Breivik's shooting spree earlier, but recognised that "hardly anyone could have imagined" the secondary attack on Utøya. The prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, said he deeply regretted the security and police blunders, and pledged to learn from the mistakes.
"Sadly, however, after repeated school massacres in other countries, an armed desperado who shoots adolescents is indeed conceivable – also in Norway," it added. Several of the heads of departments have already resigned, including the justice minister, Knut Storberget, and PST chief, Janne Kristiansen, but Oslo police chief Sissel Hammer says she will remain while she retains the trust of her superiors.
Though Breivik has admitted the attacks, he rejected criminal guilt during his trial, saying his victims had betrayed their country by embracing a multicultural society. The current justice minister, Grete Faremo, said she would look closely at recommendations from the report before making any decisions, including calls for bans on semi-automatic weapons and improvements in shift patterns for police officers, too many of whom were just working office hours.
Prosecutors have said there were doubts about his sanity and suggested Breivik be committed to compulsory psychiatric care instead of prison. A ruling is set for 24 August. Professor Bjørn Ivar Kruke, a crisis management specialist at Stavanger University, who contributed to the report, said it would have been difficult to predict the shootings on Utøya, but the bomb in Oslo, which killed eight, had already been predicted.
"It shouldn't be possible to drive a car up to the main entrance and walk away with a pistol in your hand. That should be expected," he said.
A training exercise from 2006 had created the scenario of a car bomb attack on government buildings but a recommendation to close the roads around the central district had been snarled up in bureaucracy for five years, said the report.
Gjørv said the commission had "become fascinated" with the way Britain concentrated much of its counter-terrorism expertise and prevention strategies in the office of the prime minister, but concluded that Norway would do better to improve leadership in its existing institutions.