The brother of a man gunned down by Anders Behring Breivik hurled a shoe at the mass killer in court on Friday, shouting: “Go to hell, go to hell, you killed my brother.”
The outburst followed days of harrowing testimony from survivors of Norway’s worst peacetime massacre.
The shoe missed Breivik, but struck his co-defense lawyer, Vibeke Hein Baera, who was seated closest to the public gallery, during the presentation of an autopsy report.
Police said the attacker, who was quickly escorted from the court, was a brother of one of the 69 people Breivik methodically shot dead on the small island of Utoeya in July last year during a youth camp organized by the ruling Labour Party.
Breivik admits to the killings, but denies criminal responsibility, saying he was defending Norwegian ethnic purity from Muslim immigration and the multiculturalism policies of the governing Labor Party.
The Aftenposten newspaper named the man who threw the shoe as Hayder Mustafa Qasim, an Iraqi whose asylum seeker brother was killed on the island by Breivik.
“I took off my shoe, stood up, shouted at the killer, got eye contact with him and threw the shoe,” Qasim told Aftenposten. “‘Go to hell, killer,’ I shouted. He looked right into my eyes. I felt that he had understood my message. My brother was killed on Utoeya. He was alone in Norway, without family. The killer took his life. And he ruined my life and my family’s life.”
The incident evoked the gesture by an Iraqi reporter who hurled his shoes at former US president George W. Bush in 2008. Hitting someone with a shoe is considered particularly insulting in the Middle East because footwear is regarded as unclean.
Some in the courtroom applauded Qasim’s gesture, some said “finally” and others started to cry. Police, removed him from the court and increased their presence to avoid further interruptions of the trial, which is expected to last 10 weeks.
Local media quoted Breivik, 33, as saying after the incident: “If anyone wants to throw something, you can throw it at me when I’m entering or leaving the court. Don’t throw things at my lawyers.”
Friday’s outburst was the first interruption of proceedings. Many observers have been surprised by the cool Nordic civility on display in the courtroom despite a killing spree that traumatized this nation of 5 million.
Friday’s incident came at the end of a week of harrowing testimony from survivors of Breivik’s killing spree. As well as those shot dead, eight others died in a massive car bomb Breivik detonated outside the prime minister’s offices in central Oslo.
Police played down the shoe throwing incident.
“We regard this as a spontaneous emotional outburst,” said Rune Bjoersvik, the police officer charge of police operations in the court. “We wish it hadn’t happened, but we don’t regard this a dramatic breach of safety.”
Throughout his trial, Breivik has listened calmly to the descriptions of his killings and shown little emotion, except when hearing descriptions about how he was said to have let out “cries of joy” and laughed while shooting, which he has denied.
During Friday’s hearing, Breivik said one person at Utoeya had thrown an object at his face as he went about the small island shooting his victims, but he gave no more details.
Breivik has said he should either be executed or acquitted, calling the prospect of a prison sentence “pathetic” and an insanity ruling “worse than death.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of