29 Jul 2011

Norway funerals begin as police name 77 victims

The funerals for the victims of the Norwegian massacre have begun, as police name all 77 people killed by Anders Behring Breivik on Utoya Island and in Oslo.

Bano Rashid, 18, was buried at Nesodden church near Oslo as the nation paused for memorial services after the worst attacks on Norway since World War Two.

She was one of 69 victims shot dead at a Labour Party camp on Utoya island. Eight other people were killed by a bomb blast in Oslo.

Norwegian police say they have identified all the bodies recovered after the bombing and shooting.

Bano Rashid, 18, will be buried at Nesodden church near Oslo (Reuters)

Flags around the nation are flying at half mast to mark the day a week ago when Anders Behring Breivik carried out the terror attacks.

“We have to stand united and carry their dreams forward,” Nesodden mayor Christian Holm said of Rashid and another Nesodden youth, Diderik Aamodt Olsen, who died in the attacks.

Flanked by an imam and a bishop from Norway’s Lutheran state church, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg attended a ceremony in Oslo’s main mosque at 13.30, the time Breivik detonated a homemade car bomb on 22 July.

“We were victims of an attack on the heart of democracy,” Stoltenberg said of the attacks targeting Stoltenberg’s ruling Labour Party.

“The result was a strengthened democracy. A tighter unity.

“We want to be one community. Across faith, ethnicity, gender and rank,” Stoltenberg said.

Gunman faces police interrogation

Anders Behring Breivik was transferred to face his second interrogation since the massacre. He was picked up at a jail and transported to police headquarters in Oslo.

Investigators believe the 32-year-old acted alone, after years of meticulous planning, and have not found anything to support his claims that he is part of an anti-Muslim militant network.

Police lawyer Paal Fredrik Hjort Kraby said on Friday: “About the interview with Breivik, it has continued today and that’s a more formal part where he will go through his last interview which was very long, almost 50 pages, so it would take a long time and probably we will not be able to ask him any questions.

“That will be for the next interview which we have already started planning.”

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Breivik was questioned for seven hours last Saturday, the day after the twin attacks targeting the government district of Oslo and a youth camp of the prime minister’s left-leaning Labour Party on the island of Utoya, north-west of the capital.

He admitted to carrying out the attacks but has pleaded not guilty to terror charges, saying he is in a war, according to his lawyer and police.

Police have charged Breivik with terrorism, which carries a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison.

However, it is possible the charge will change during the investigation to crimes against humanity, which carries a 30-year prison term.