Breivik killed with joyous ‘battle cry’

Reuters/Oslo

Breivik: asked to leave the courtroom

Anders Behring Breivik roared a “battle cry” and appeared both angry and joyous as he shot people one by one with a distorted face, survivors of the Norwegian far-right killer’s massacre told a court yesterday.“I heard screaming but I couldn’t make out the words,” Ingvild Leren Stensrud, 17, who was shot in the leg and shoulder, said.Stensrud, who survived after another victim fell on her, knocking her to the floor and creating the impression that she was dead, said she initially thought Breivik was not alone.“I thought they (the attackers) were exchanging messages but realising he was alone, I think the scream was actually a battle cry,” she testified. Breivik made sure his victims were dead by delivering a control shot to their heads one by one, she added.Breivik killed 77 people on July 22, first detonating a car bomb outside government buildings in central Oslo which killed eight, and then shooting 69 people at the ruling Labour Party’s summer camp on Utoeya Island.He admits the killings but denies criminal guilt, arguing the killings were necessary since his victims were “traitors” who promoted Muslim immigration and multiculturalism, thereby threatening Norwegian ethnic purity.Public reaction to the trial has been mostly calm.Stensrud said she sought refuge in the summer camp’s cafe, hiding behind a piano, only to get trapped as Breivik walked from room to room in the small building, killing over a dozen people.“I tried to get to the door behind others and when they got shot, they fell on me. One laid across my chest,” she told the trial, which will continue until mid-June. “That’s when I got hit in the left thigh. Many were shot lying on the floor.”“Next to me (a man) was coughing up blood,” she added.That person, Glenn Martin Waldenstroem, said Breivik appeared both joyous and angry.“His face looked distorted,” said Waldenstroem, 20, who survived being shot in the face.“He looked angry and smiled simultaneously,” he added, after asking the court to escort Breivik out of the room, saying he was unable to testify with him present.