OSLO, (Reuters) – A man identified as the older brother of one of the victims of Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik threw a shoe at him during his trial today, the first time the proceeding has been interrupted by a public outburst.
“Go to hell, go to hell, you killed my brother,” the man, who was seated in the second row of the public gallery, screamed as he threw the shoe at Breivik from a few metres (yards) away, newspaper VG reported on its website.
The shoe missed Breivik but struck his co-defence lawyer, Vibeke Hein Baera, who was seated closest to the public gallery, during the presentation of an autopsy report.
Norwegian media said the man was a brother of one of the victims of Breivik’s rampage, but his name was not immediately available. VG said people attending the trial applauded, after which the man was removed from the courtroom by police.
The incident came during a week of harrowing testimony from survivors of Breivik’s rampage across the small island of Utoeya last July, where the ruling Labour Party was holding a youth camp. He killed 69 people there, many of them teenagers.
Breivik has listened calmly to the descriptions of his killings and shown hardly any 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.
Breivik has admitted the killings, but denies criminal responsibility. He says he was defending Norwegian ethnic purity from Muslim immigration and the multiculturalism backed by the Labour Party.