Defense Plea in the Anders Breivik Trial (2012)
Defense lawyer Geir Lippestad arguing for his client, Anders Breivik
The defense counsel presented the following plea:
Primarily: For the petition of the Prosecuting Authority of Anders Breivik’s transferal to compulsory mental health care to be dismissed.
In the alternative:
For A [Anders Breivik] to be acquitted.
For A [Anders Breivik] to be treated as leniently as possible.
The defendant has, from the moment of his arrest, in all police interviews and in all court hearings and at the trial, acknowledged the very acts of which he is indicted. His statements during the investigations on the planning and execution of the bomb explosion at the Government District and on the shooting on Utøya have been confirmed by police investigations. The defendant has maintained his police statements in court. Hence, there is no doubt that the defendant has committed the acts of which he is indicted. Although the Court will discuss the objective and subjective conditions for punishability further on in the judgment, in relation to the relevant penal provisions, the deaths will henceforth be referred to as murders, the personal injuries as attempted murders and the explosion at the Government District and the shooting on Utøya as terrorist acts.
- On the defendant and his activities in the time before the preparations for the terrorist acts
2.1 The defendant's family background, childhood and school years
The defendant was born on *.*.1979. The parents were married at the time, and lived in ––– gate in Oslo. The mother had the daughter B, who is 6 years older than the defendant, from a previous relationship. The father had 3 children from a previous marriage, and worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When the defendant was 6 months old, the family (the mother, the father, the defendant and his half-sister) moved to London, where the father worked as an embassy counsellor.
The parents split up when the defendant was a year and a half old. The mother then moved back to the apartment in ––– gate with the defendant and his half-sister.
In 1981, the defendant's mother contacted the social welfare office, applying for respite care in the form of weekend home stays for the defendant. The application was accepted, but after some time the arrangement was discontinued. In December 1982, the defendant moved with his mother and sister to X in Oslo. The defendant later entered nursery school at the Y, where he stayed until he started primary school.
The defendant's mother contacted the family counselling office in early 1983, and was referred to the National Centre of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (SSBU). The family stayed at the family day unit of the Juvenile Psychiatric Clinic from 1 to 25 February 1983. The defendant was 4 years old at the time. The stay first resulted in a letter from SSBU to the Child Welfare Services suggesting a weekend foster home.
Based on information on the care situation of the defendant, his father filed a suit in the spring of 1983, claiming that the responsibility for daily care of the defendant should be transferred to him. The case was later settled, and the defendant continued to live with his mother. The defendant had holiday stays with his father until the age of 15, after which the contact was broken.
In October of 1983, SSBU sent another letter to the Child Welfare Services, stating, inter alia, that “A's care situation is so deficient that he is at risk of developing more serious psychopathology”. The letter was treated as a note of concern, and investigations were instigated. The Child Welfare Services did not find foster home placement appropriate, but recommended home inspections for a short period. Oslo Child Welfare Committee closed the case without implementing any form of assistance in the summer of 1984.
In the time period from 1986 to 1995, the defendant attended Z Primary School and Æ Lower Secondary School. The defendant and his mother moved to –––veien in Oslo in 1994. By then, the sister had moved out to live on her own. The same year – in December 1994 – a new child welfare case was opened. The grounds were a note from the Child Welfare Emergency Service Team after the defendant was stopped by the police at Oslo Central Station, when he arrived by train from Denmark with 43 spray paint cans in his bag. In February/March 1994, the defendant was reported to the police twice for graffiti. The Child Welfare Services closed the case without taking any measures on 15 March 1995.
In the fall of 1995, the defendant entered Ø Upper Secondary School, where he was a student for 1 year before switching to the upper secondary school Å. He left school out of his own will during the third and final year in the fall of 1997 without graduating with a diploma. According to the defendant's statement, he left school because he wanted to earn money and establish himself as an entrepreneur.
The defendant left his mother's home in 2000. First, he rented a room in ––– gate in Oslo and in 2001 he moved into a shared apartment in ––– gate. In September 2003, he moved to an apartment at ––– gate, where he lived alone until the fall of 2006, when he moved back in with his mother at –––veien. In April 2011, the defendant rented a small farm in Åmot Municipality in Østerdalen, and he moved there in May 2011. The Court will revert to the time from 2006 onwards under the discussion of the question of criminal sanity. The defendant has not done compulsory military service or civilian national service.
2.2 The defendant's work experience and business activities
In the summer of 1997, the defendant was employed in the company Direkte Respons Senteret. First, he worked part time and later full time with the company. His duties were related to telemarketing and customer service. According to the defendant, he was promoted to team leader after some time. In 2001, the company was acquired and the name changed to SNT Norway. He continued to work in the company until April 2003.
During the period while the defendant was employed in Direkte Respons Senteret, he founded and ran several types of business through various companies.
In the summer of 1998, the defendant and a friend founded the company A og C Marketing AS. The company sold telecom services, but the business generated little income and was dissolved after a short period. Media Group AS was founded in the summer of 1999. The company did development and sales of outdoor marketing spots in Oslo. In June 2001, the defendant sold the shares in the company without making a profit. In July 2001, the defendant founded the sole proprietorship Citygroup. He had a go at various types of business, including sales of software solutions and the company was dissolved in December 2004. The defendant was in Liberia in 2002, probably in order to check out the possibility of purchasing diamonds. The police have confiscated receipts dated prior to the trip to Liberia from the purchase of two raw diamonds and a magnifying lens, and they have disclosed telephone calls to various diamond vendors in Norway, England and the USA both before and after the trip. The defendant himself has explained that he was in Liberia to meet a Serbian nationalist.
In December 2002, the defendant set up the website Diplomaservice.com. Through this website, he sold false diplomas apparently issued by various institutions of higher education.
In January 2005, he founded the company E–Commerce Group AS. From within this enterprise, he continued with the sale of diplomas. He employed 2 persons fulltime in Norway and rented offices in Pilestredet in Oslo. After some time, the sales of the false diplomas generated considerable income, for which tax was mostly not paid.
To enable money laundering of the income from the sales of false diplomas, the defendant founded the company Brentwood Solutions LTD in a tax haven in the Caribbean. The income was deposited in an account in the name of Brentwood Solutions LTD in a foreign bank, and later transferred to E–Commerce Group AS as payment for services. Police investigations have shown payments of altogether NOK 3 687 588 for sales of false documents in the period from 2002 to 2006. The defendant discontinued the operations of E–Commerce Group AS in the first half of 2006. By then he had a not insignificant share portfolio, in addition to savings from the sales of diplomas. The company then went into compulsory liquidation in January 2008.
After the defendant discontinued the sales of false diplomas in the winter of 2006, he has not had any income from any employments or from his own enterprise. Nor has he received any financial support from the public authorities.
In addition to the abovementioned activities, the defendant has been trading in shares from 1997, except in the period 1998 to 2002. In the years 2005 and 2006, he made slightly less than 350 transactions in his own name or in the name of E–Commerce Group AS. In the years 2007 to 2009, the defendant sold shares for a bit more than 1.1 million NOK, spread over 60 transactions.
2.3 The period from 2006 – World of Warcraft
In the autumn of 2006, the defendant, as already mentioned, moved back in with his mother in –––veien. In the following year, he had practically no contact with friends. His main activity this year was playing the online game World of Warcraft.
The period from 2006 is central in the assessment of the criminal sanity of the defendant; hence, the Court will go into further detail on his gaming activities and what World of Warcraft is about.
The defendant set up an account to play World of Warcraft on 2 March 2006. WoW, with a recommended lower age limit of 12, is an online role player game in which several players can play on teams with a common objective. The game is mainly about solving assignments for rewards. Such an assignment may be anything from collecting carrots to killing a dragon. Solving an assignment in the game may take weeks. As you proceed, solving assignments, you will get access to «gold» and “properties’ and be awarded points. Gradually, you can advance to new levels in the game. All playing takes place in real time online, and the players collaborate verbally through microphone headsets connected to each player's computer.
The defendant played a character by the name A Nordic until 2009. In 2009, his character changed the name to Conservatism. In the document Agenda New.doc, which is a diary found on a seized computer in the apartment in –––veien, the defendant writes that he has had several roles in the game, including guild master [sic ], and played in several guilds until 2009. A guild is the same as a team, and a guild master is a team leader. A team leader is responsible for coordinating the players' efforts in the game. According to the defendant's diary, he was a guild master for the team Virtue in 2006. This was confirmed by a witness who played World of Warcraft actively himself in the period 2005 to 2008, in periods on the same guild as the defendant. After the expansion pack The Burning Crusade was released, the defendant joined the guild Unit in 2007, where the witness was the guild master. The witness described the Unit activity level as high. The players would play six to seven days a week, and for up to 12 to 16 hours a day, including their own preparations. The witness himself played 16 hours a day, and believed that the defendant played nearly as much. He explained that the defendant's player rank was “Officer’, and that the defendant was the best officer the witness had had. In the diary, the defendant describes himself as a deputy guild master until the guild split up later on the same year. The defendant then joined the team Nevermore, where he was a regular player for 18 months.
The player witness further described the defendant as a social player, with many friends in the game. The defendant appeared knowledgeable, and was good at motivating guild mates. He never discussed politics, but might for instance discuss soccer. The defendant never mentioned that he was writing a book. The witness has not met the defendant outside of cyberspace.
The defendant's World of Warcraft account was inactive from 29 May to 10 December 2008. According to the defendant's own posting to World of Warcraft forum sites, in this period he played the computer game Age of Conan. The defendant resumed playing World of Warcraft on 10 December 2008, and on 20 January 2009 he joined the guild Goosfraba. A chart shows that in the period from 23 November 2010 until 3 March 2011, the defendant played on average 6.5 hours a day, and on certain days as much as 17 hours. There is no evidence of any playing time after 3 March 2011.
- The run-up to the terrorist acts
3.1 The compendium
The same day the terrorist acts were committed, the defendant distributed a compendium, also referred to as the Manifesto, to a number of email addresses. The compendium was written under the pseudonym A2. It has not been established when the defendant started working on the compendium; however, he claims himself it was in 2007. At the trial the defendant stated that the compendium had been made to create a foundation for the development of a revolutionary right in Europe.
The compendium consists of 1518 pages – 1801 pages after the police's reformatting – and it is written in English. It is titled «2083 A European Declaration of Independence». The defendant explained that 2083 refers to the year that will mark the 400th anniversary of the Battle of Vienna in 1683. He believes this was one of the two most important battles in the history of Europe, because it prevented the Ottoman Empire from conquering all of Western Europe. The rest of its title, European Declaration of Independence, is supposedly taken from an essay written by a blogger known as Fjordman.
The compendium is divided into three books. Book 1 is titled: “What you need to know, our falsified history and other forms of cultural Marxist/multiculturalist propaganda”. Book 1 provides a subjective presentation of European history with a particular emphasis on describing Islam as a violence-oriented ideology. Little of its content has been written by the defendant himself; it consists of texts taken from different sources, presumably from the Internet. Book 2 is titled “Europe Burning”. The defendant has described book 2 as the ideological part of the compendium. Some of it has been written by the defendant himself, but most of it has been taken from the writings of others. Book 3 is titled “A declaration of preemptive War” and it was written by the defendant himself. He describes this book as the military part of the manifesto, where the reader is encouraged to participate in an ongoing civil war in Europe.
In book 3, the defendant has, amongst other things, described his own tasks, and circumstances linked to the preparations for and execution of the terrorist acts on 22 July 2011. He has furthermore given a description of a network he calls the Knights Templar. He writes, inter alia, that he took 50 pages of notes during the network's founding meeting in London in 2002, which later formed the basis of the compendium. In police interviews and in his statement in court, the defendant has upheld the compendium's description of the basic features of the Knights Templar. He has nonetheless gradually toned down the importance of the organisation and its members, stating, inter alia, that he in the compendium has presented a pompous description of the factual circumstances.
3.2 Knights Templar
According to the police's notes, the defendant said the following when he was arrested on 22 July 2011: “We want to seize power in Europe within 60 years. I am a Commander of the Knights Templar Norway. The Knights Templar was established in 2002 in London with delegates from 12 countries. We are crusaders and nationalists.”
The defendant's presentation of his role within the Knights Templar has been central in relation to the question of his criminal sanity. The police investigation shows that the network most probably does not exist, and the question is whether the defendant's description of the Knights Templar may be a manifestation of delusions. The Court shall therefore present the main features of the defendant's description of the Knights Templar.
The defendant has stated that he came into contact with militant nationalists on the Internet in 2001, later leading to the establishment of the Knights Templar. NATO's bombing of Serbia during the conflict in Kosovo in 1999 was, according to the defendant, «the straw that broke the camel's back» for many of these militant nationalists.
In April 2002, the defendant went to Liberia, purportedly to meet a militant Serbian nationalist, before continuing to London to participate in the founding meeting of the Knights Templar. The police investigation has shown that the defendant was in Liberia at the time in question, but there is nothing to indicate that the defendant had any contact with a Serbian during his stay there. The police believe the purpose of the trip was to explore the possibilities of buying diamonds.
The defendant has all along maintained that he met three other nationalists at the founding meeting in London. The police investigation confirms that the defendant was in London in early May 2002; however, it has not been established what he did or who, if any, he met during his stay there. Neither in police interviews nor at the trial did the defendant want to give any further information about the establishment of or the members of the Knights Templar, presumably because such information may contribute towards revealing other members of the Knights Templar network. According to the defendant's statement, the Knights Templar is not an organisation in the traditional sense. The defendant has all along maintained that between 15 and 80 persons from different European countries belong to the network. They operate as autonomous and independent one-man cells, and there is no contact among them. With the current situation in Europe, it is impossible to establish a European militant organisation, because it will be discovered by national intelligence services. The defendant has also upheld his earlier statement that he met persons with links to the Knights Templar network during two far-right extremist gatherings in the Baltic in 2004. The police investigation has revealed that the defendant was in Lithuania in January and in Estonia in April 2004, presumably to open accounts that later were used for laundering the proceeds of fake school certificate sales.
The defendant has furthermore explained that the Knights Templar is a network of militant nationalists. The name comes from the Knights Templar Order, which was a Catholic monastic order with military functions. This monastic order participated in the Crusades in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. According to the defendant, the Knights Templar is to defend the interests of the European indigenous people by contributing to the deportation of as many Muslims as possible from Europe. According to the defendant, the Knights Templar is a military order and a military tribunal that defines its own targets and means, including who are to be killed.
The Knights Templar network's ideal is the “crusader identity”. A knight is a «perfect foot soldier» in the struggle against Muslim invasion in Europe. The defendant refers to himself alternately as “cell commander”, “knight” and “foot soldier”. The defendant explained in court that the symbols including rituals, medals and uniforms described in the compendium do not exist, but that they are meant as suggestions to future members. Based on the evidence provided during the main hearing, the Court has not found grounds indicating that the Knights Templar exists. The Court shall revert to the significance of this in the assessment of the defendant's criminal sanity.
3.3 The defendant's stated motives – ideology
The defendant has stated political motives for the terrorist acts of 22 July 2011. The defendant's political views are presented in his compendium and have also been discussed during police interviews and during the court-appointed experts' conversations with him. At the trial, the defendant started his statement with a prepared, continuous account of his political views. He also underwent a lengthy in-court examination on this topic. Below follows a short presentation of some of the principal elements of the defendant's views. The defendant is of the opinion that ethnic Norwegians have been under attack in the form of ethnic “deconstruction” since the Labour Party opened up for mass immigration in the 1960s. Norway has been transformed into a multicultural state, where the Norwegian indigenous population is in the process of being exterminated. All the parties in Parliament (Storting), but particularly the Labour Party, are responsible for this. Today's immigration policy will result in Muslims forming the majority population, first in large cities such as Oslo, during the course of 5 to 10 years, and later throughout the entire country. Leading Norwegian politicians are participating, according to the defendant, in cooperation with European elites where the aim is to promote “multiculturalism”. The multicultural project has never been submitted to Norwegian voters, but, on the contrary, has been kept concealed by politicians and the media. The Norwegian press has defining powers and real freedom of expression does not exist. What is today called democracy is in reality a cultural Marxist dictatorship. When nationalists and cultural conservatives are not allowed access to the media, it will not be possible either to stop the “deconstruction” of Norwegian ethnicity, culture and Christian value base, by using peaceful means. Armed revolution is then the only alternative. The defendant claims that if he and likeminded persons can force the Labour Party to change their immigration policy, then this could contribute to preventing civil war in Norway.
The defendant is of the opinion that Norwegian culture has been destroyed by the Marxists through a Marxist cultural revolution. The curriculum of Norwegian schools supports this. Songs such as “Children of the Rainbow” are used to brainwash school pupils. Women should not work, but devote themselves to their families and the production of ethnic Norwegian children. Institutions should also be established for this purpose. The defendant wishes to see a militant church, as the church was before the Reformation when the Pope was the highest military leader in Europe. Christian leaders in Norway and the rest of Europe should support militant nationalists who are fighting against the de-Christianization of Europe. The defendant described himself as an ultranationalist. The mandate to kill in order to save “his people” is something he has given himself as cell commander of the Knights Templar. By means of the acts of 22 July 2011, he wanted to provoke a witch hunt against moderate cultural conservative nationalist. The witch hunt will contribute to more censorship, which in turn will lead to polarization and contribute to further radicalization. The more people lose faith in a peaceful fight, the more will become revolutionaries. The defendant describes the terrorist acts of 22 July as a preemptive attack in defence of the Norwegian indigenous people and Norwegian culture. He himself is merely a tool for a revolution. Universal human rights allow for the defence of one's own ethnic group and culture.
The defendant explains his own radicalization as the result of confrontations that he and his friends have had with Muslims during childhood and adolescent years. None of the defendant's friends who testified in court during the trial were able to confirm any of these incidents. The Court takes for a fact that the development of the defendant's anti-Islam views are connected, inter alia, with his rightwing extremist contacts on the Internet.
The Court would note that the evidence presented at the trial has demonstrated that the defendant's extreme immigration-critical views are shared by others. Both the terrorist attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001 and the cartoon dispute in Denmark have nourished anti-Islamic currents. Within rightwing extremist groups there are also others who believe that there exists a secret cooperation to Islamize Europe, something that is expressed, inter alia, on a number of websites. Such conspiracy theories clearly have gained some foothold. One such conspiracy theory is called Eurabia. The supporters of this conspiracy theory claim, inter alia, that European countries are systematically being Islamized through planned immigration from Muslim countries. Few likeminded people share the defendant's view that this Islamization must be combated by means of terrorism. It suffices for the Court to refer to the fact that the witnesses Postdoctoral Fellow Lars Gule, journalist Øyvind Strømme, Professor Mattias Gardell, Senior Researcher Brynjar Lia and Professor Tore Bjørgo all gave detailed accounts on this score.
3.4 Preparations
The defendant initiated the practical preparations for the terrorist acts in 2009. In May 2009, he set up the company Geofarm, which in the course of March 2011 was converted into A Geofarm. The purpose of this business enterprise was presumably to purchase ingredients for the manufacture of the bomb. It has been established that the defendant applied for credit cards to several credit card companies during September/October 2009. In total, he had ten different credit cards which he used. The total credit limit was NOK 235 000. The credit cards were hardly used before April 2011. The defendant ran out of funds in his Norwegian bank accounts on 26 April 2011. Most transactions after this date were made with credit cards. The remaining credit on 23 July 2011 was NOK 27 618.
In the compendium, the defendant is depicted in a selfmade uniform with references to the Knights Templar. The police have traced the purchases of uniform insignia back to eleven different purchases from eleven suppliers in five countries between September 2009 and May 2010. Both in the Government District and on the island of Utøya, the defendant wore clothes and equipment which bore resemblance to the uniform of the police. The police have identified a total of 36 purchases from 29 suppliers in eight countries linked to this equipment between April 2010 and March 2011; however, most of the purchases were made between May and July 2010.
The defendant acquired four weapons – two rifles, one pistol and one shotgun – as well as ammunition for the weapons. He resold one of the rifles. In total, the police have identified 22 purchases linked to the weapons/ammunition from 14 retailers in four countries. Most purchases were made between May 2010 and June 2011. On 6 April 2011, the defendant signed the lease to rent Vålstua farm in Østerdalen Valley from 1 May 2011. The rent was NOK 10 000 per month. The defendant paid a deposit of NOK 30 000. He moved to the farm on 4 May 2011. The main purpose of renting the farm was its suitability for the manufacture of the bomb.
The bomb which was detonated in the Government District, weighed 950 kilos with a probable explosive force of between 400 and 700 kilo of TNT. The explosive in the bomb, made by the defendant himself, consisted of a mixture of artificial fertiliser, diesel and aluminium. The police have identified 43 purchases from 36 suppliers in five countries between September 2010 and July 2011 which are linked to the manufacture of the bomb.
In court, the defendant described how the various components of the bomb were produced and put together to make the bomb. During interviews with the police, he also described the manufacturing process. The description has subsequently been verified by the police, who concluded that the bomb was manufactured like the defendant explained. The police have also carried out a test detonation of a bomb manufactured according to the defendant's descriptions.
The bomb was manufactured at Vålstua farm, and the defendant spent several weeks on this process. The Court was shown an illustration which the defendant himself made at the request of the police. The drawing shows the manufacturing process of the bomb. An essential component was artificial fertiliser, which he bought from Felleskjøpet at Rena. The artificial fertiliser came in prills (small spheres) that had to be ground. The defendant used food processors to accomplish this.
On 15 July 2011, the defendant picked up the «bomb van», a VW crafter, from Avis car rental in Oslo. The defendant also rented a Fiat Doblò. On 20 July, he drove the Crafter to Oslo. He parked the car in the vicinity of his mother's flat and spent the night there. On 21 July 2011, he took the train back to Rena and a taxi back to the farm. At the farm, the defendant completed his last preparations before driving the Doblò to Oslo and parking it near his mother's flat at approximately 23:30. The defendant spent the night at his mother's flat.
In the morning of 22 July 2011, some activity on the defendant's computer has been registered from 08:15 until 10:39. The defendant then prepared to distribute his compendium. He then drove the Doblò, which he later used as a getaway car, from Skøyen to Hammersborg Torg Square, in the vicinity of the Government District, and paid for a parking ticket at 12:03. He walked from Hammersborg Torg Square, via the Government District, where he was filmed by CCTV cameras from 12:06:59 until 12:09:19, to Stortorvet. He then took a taxi back to his mother's flat.
Back in the flat, he uploaded the video “Knights Templar 2083 – Movie Trailer’ to the websites Veoh.com and Youtube.com. The defendant explained that the video was made around February 2010, and that it is a short version of the compendium. The defendant made the video by downloading pictures from the Internet, edited some of them in Photoshop and combined all the pictures with text and music in Windows Movie Maker, the video editing programme. The video, which is mentioned at the beginning of the compendium, is a 12-minute 22-second footage. It consists of 99 still photos with images and/or text. The video is divided into four parts: (1) The Rise of Cultural Marxism in Western Europe, (2) Islamic Colonization, (3) Hope, (4) New Beginning.
The defendant sent out an email with the compendium as an attachment to a number of email addresses. The police examination of the defendant's computer showed that he attempted to send it to 8 109 email addresses at 14:09. The email with the compendium was registered as being received by 958 email addresses.
The defendant has explained that he used two Facebook accounts to distribute the email. He sent out friend requests to a great number of people, and whenever his friend request was accepted, he would save the email address in a list which in the end totaled 8 109 email addresses. Moreover, he has said that the addresses were collected in the course of a period of just over 4 months, from November 2009 to February 2010. As part of the defendant's performance-enhancing preparations, he took three courses of anabolic steroids over an 18-month period prior to the terrorist attacks; one from February until May 2010, one from December 2010 until February 2011, and one from April until 22 July 2011. The last course consisted of a daily intake of 40 mg of Dianabol from 25 April to 15 June 2011, followed by a daily intake of 50 mg of Stanasolol. The defendant explained that he also worked out at a fitness centre and exercised by going hiking with a stonefilled backpack. Additionally, he obtained shooting practice through his membership in a pistol club.
Furthermore, the defendant took a stimulant called «ekastack», during the last two or three days before the terrorist attacks. Ekastack consists of ephedrine, caffeine and Aspirin. Professor Jørg Mørland, Dr. Med., of the National Institute of Public Health, who carried out an expert assessment of whether the defendant was under the influence at the time of committing the acts, wrote the following about the substance ephedrine in his expert report: “Ephedrine can, depending on the dosage, have a stimulating effect on the central nervous system, similar to that of amphetamine. Higher dosages and higher blood concentrations can give intoxication symptoms where increased self-confidence, increased willingness to take risks and chances, as well as impaired critical sense, may occur. It is also assumed that there will be an increased risk of aggression and violence.”
From the ephedrine and caffeine concentrations found in blood and hair samples taken during the early hours of 23 July 2011, Mørland concluded that during the period 12:00 to 15:30 on 22 July 2011, the defendant was “slightly to moderately” under the influence of a central nervous system stimulant, similar to the influence achieved after an oral intake of 10–30 mg of amphetamine by someone not accustomed to using it. The use of anabolic steroids was not considered to have resulted in any additional effect, but “the possibility that it may have exaggerated any aggression and hypomania/mania cannot be completely ruled out.” The defendant has also explained that he prepared himself mentally for the forthcoming terrorist acts by using a meditation technique to “de-emotionalise” himself. This technique, which according to the defendant is the same as the one used by Japanese warriors, involved efforts where he concentrated intensely on what he was doing, while listening to specially selected music. The defendant was observed with earplugs when he was walking around on Utøya, but he said himself that he did not listen to music while he was on the island.
Finally, the defendant explained that he played a violent computer game called “Call of Duty, Modern Warfare II” in the time leading up to the terrorist acts. He allegedly used the game to simulate combat with the police Delta force. Police investigation confirms that he played “Call of Duty” since 2010 for about 130 hours.