A court in Oslo remanded Anders Behring Breivik in custody for eight weeks Monday after the gunman who said he was behind last week's massacre of 76 people claimed to have an active network of accomplices.
As the police lowered the death toll from Friday's mass shooting at an island summer camp, the 32-year-old suspect was refused permission to appear in a uniform at his first appearance in an Oslo court.
The judge also ruled in the closed door hearing that Behring Breivik be held in solitary confinement for the first four weeks of an eight-week period in custody, with a ban on all communication with the outside world in a bid to aid a police investigation.
The suspect told the court hearing he had 'two further cells' in his organisation, according to the court registrar.
Judge Kim Heger told reporters that the 32-year-old suspect told the court he wanted to 'send a powerful signal' around Europe that Marxist and Muslim colonisation had to end.
'The operation was not aimed at killing the largest number possible, but to send a powerful signal that couldn't be mistaken,' Heger said.
'Despite that the accused has acknowledged the actual circumstances, he has not pleaded guilty,' the judge spelled out, through a translator.
Behring Breivik's brief appearance came around an
hour after the country had marked a minute's silence for the victims of last Friday's bomb and shooting spree which left 76 people dead.
The police on Monday revised their previous tolls, saying that 68 people were now known to have been killed in the island shootings while eight died in the car bombing. The previous overall toll had stood at 93, 86 of whom were thought to have been shot on the island.
Behring Breivik arrived at the court and left in an armoured Mercedes via a back entrance to the courthouse in downtown Oslo.
TV2 television showed grainy images of the shaven-headed suspect wearing a red top being taken from the court, almost unrecognisable as the man with a mop of blond hair featured in photographs in his own lengthy Internet manifesto.
People waiting to catch a glimpse of him cried 'traitor' and 'bloody killer,' Norway's NTB agency said.
Behring Breivik's lawyer, Geir Lippestad, came in through the main entrance, having to force a passage through hundreds of journalists waiting since early morning.
Thousands of people had earlier bowed their heads in silence outside Oslo's main university at a ceremony led by the prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, and King Harald V.
'To remember the victims who died at the government's headquarters and on the island of Utoeya, I declare a minute of silence,' said Stoltenberg on the stroke of midday before he opened a book of condolence.
The country's train stations closed and the stock market halted trading. Nordic neighbours Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland also held a minute's silence and flew national flags at half-mast.
'It was an attack against the very values that our countries are built upon. It was an attack against all of us,' said the Danish prime minister, Lars Loekke Rasmussen.
Before the attack, Behring Breivik wrote a 1,500-page manifesto, datelined London. He boasted he was one of up to 80 'solo martyr cells' recruited across Western Europe to topple governments tolerant of Islam, it said, adding that Scotland Yard was now trying to establish if he had recently visited London.
At least seven people died in an initial car bombing outside the prime minister's office, in a calculated distraction for police allowing Behring Breivik to shoot scores of youngsters attending a summer camp on the island of Utoeya, 40 kilometres away.
The official toll from the island currently stands at 86 although police have said the figure could be revised downwards.
Names and photographs are to be released shortly of those who died, including offspring of senior ruling party figures.
An emotional Stoltenberg said at a memorial service on Sunday that the full extent of the 'evil' perpetrated Friday would emerge when the victims' names and their photographs are released.
It emerged Monday that the half-brother of Norway's Princess Mette-Marit — an off-duty policeman — was one of the victims of the gun attack.
Behring Breivik currently has only the status of 'official suspect,' meaning he will not learn actual charges until the investigation is concluded with police still hunting for possible accomplices.
But the attacks have triggered calls for Norway to reinstate the death penalty. The maximum prison sentence in Norway is 21 years, meaning — if found guilty — the accused could be awarded just 82 days per killing.
Behring Breivik acknowledged in his tract that he would be deemed a 'monster,' but said it was designed to end a centuries-long Muslim colonisation of Europe.
Although he told investigators he acted alone, prosecutors stressed they had yet to uncover a motive — despite the manifesto claims.
Part diary, bomb-making manual and Islamophobic rant, the tract details the self-styled Knight Templar's 'martyrdom operation' including a call for believers to spawn as many children as possible in order to generate a pool of future fighters in a Christian war he likens to a medieval crusade.
During weekend interrogation, Behring Breivik told police that Europe's deadliest attacks since the 2004 Madrid bombings, were 'cruel' but 'necessary.'
Nevertheless, lawyer Lippestad said his client felt he had done 'nothing reprehensible.'
The police have faced loud criticism over the hour it took them to reach the island, during which victims — some shot again in the head to make sure they were dead, according to witnesses — died at a rate of more than one per minute.
Source : New Age
