A man shot in the face by Norwegian extremist Anders Behring Breivik has told a court how he wrote his parents’ telephone number on the floor in his own blood, as his wounds left him unable to speak.
Glenn Waldenstrom, 20, was one of five witnesses who described yesterday how the mass killer opened fire in the cafe where they were hiding, killing 13 people.
“I could not talk, so I spat some blood on the floor and wrote my family’s telephone number in the blood,” he said of what happened after Breivik left the building. “Someone called my family.”
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Mr Waldenstrom said he remembered that the 33-year-old extremist had appeared “confused”, his face “very distorted”. “There was a mixture of joy and anger. He looked angry into the forehead area, and then he smiled at the same time,” he said.
Mr Waldenstrom spent nearly a month in hospital after the attack, and still has only 10 per cent vision in his right eye.
He said he had felt triumphant when Breivik last month described in court seeing one of his victims lying dead on the floor bleeding from the neck.
“I got a very strong sense of victory and thought, ‘Ha, I fooled you!”‘ Mr Waldenstrom told the court.
Breivik has confessed to killing 77 people in the attack last July – eight in a bomb blast in the government quarter of Oslo, and 69 during his attack on a youth camp on the island of Utoya. He has claimed the attack was “necessary” to alert Norway to the threat of Islam.
Ingvild Leren Stensrud, 17, who was also in the cafe, told the court how she had lain under a corpse, pretending to be dead, after Breivik shot at the area where she was hiding. When he moved on, only two people around her were left alive.
“I asked whether we should find another place to hide,” she said. “But we were so badly wounded that it is not really possible, and I could not move the person above me.”
She said she had remained perfectly still with her eyes closed, and had heard Breivik shouting with joy as he fired off rounds.
Breivik’s 10-week trial is largely focused on the issue of his sanity to determine whether he will be sent to prison or to a mental institution, and witness testimonies are crucial to establish his behaviour during the killings.
A first psychiatric exam found him insane but a second opinion drew the opposite conclusion.
Breivik is intent on proving that he is sane so that his anti-Islam ideology will not be considered the ravings of a lunatic. The trial continues.
Murder accused admits death threats against Kiwi Emily
May 9, 2012 -
Killed … aspiring model Emily Longley. Photo: Facebook
A wealthy jeweller’s son accused of murdering his aspiring model girlfriend in a jealous rage admitted to a jury today that he had threatened to kill her 10 or 15 times during their volatile relationship.
Elliot Turner, 20, said he never meant it and claimed his alleged victim, Emily Longley, said the same thing and phrases like “I hate you” during their rows.
Turner denies strangling 17-year-old Emily in his bedroom in Bournemouth in May last year.
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He said the pair got on well when they met and their relationship soon became sexual in December after they went out for a meal on a double date
“We instantly clicked. We had similar interests, similar choice of drinks. She shared my food – it was sweet and sour chicken I think,” he told the jury at Winchester Crown Court.
“We just got on a like a house on fire. It was amazing how well we got on. It was a really, really good time.”
Turner explained that there were arguments but they were “petty”, he said.
The jury heard that Turner denied he was obsessive about Emily but he became aware that she had been texting and talking to other men after looking at her Facebook page.
He also feared she had rekindled a relationship with an ex-boyfriend called Leon Patterson when she returned home to see her family in New Zealand in March last year.
He admitted that on the evening before she died he had called her a “whore” after they met up and she was wearing very short shorts, a leopard print bra and a small waistcoat, which Turner said meant he could see her breasts.
“I did say some harsh things, it’s true,” he said.
He also admitted that he assaulted her in a bar and threatened to kill her the same night after she poured drinks on him as they argued in a booth.
“Stupidly I grabbed Emily by the waist towards where I was sitting. She came towards me and her legs were against the end of the booth. I was just swearing – saying things I didn’t mean, which I regret now, but at the time I didn’t know what had come over me.”
Turner also told the jury he wanted to buy Emily a pink sapphire commitment ring and that he had been told some things about her past and her history of self-harming.
He denied talking to a friend, Tom Crowe, about how to kill Emily the day before she died, calling the accusation “rubbish”, but said he had been unfaithful to the business studies student during their relationship.
The jury was also told that Turner had received a harassment warning letter from the police in January 2008 when he was 16, telling him not to contact an ex-girlfriend.
The prosecution alleges that heavily built Turner strangled the part-time Topshop assistant and that he was a violent and jealous boyfriend who feared Emily was being unfaithful.
He went “absolutely nuts”, it is claimed, in a culmination of a month of anger and upset over his suspicions she was “twisting his heart”.
When arrested he had his passport in his pocket and bags packed, the court heard.
The court has heard he told paramedics the couple argued and Emily attacked him. He says he defended himself and when he woke up she was dead.
He told officers at the scene: “I never meant to harm her, I just defended myself.” He then made no comment in police interviews.
Computers seized from his home had Google searches for “death by strangulation” and “how to get out of being charged for murder”.
Police bugged the family home and recorded Turner’s parents, Leigh Turner, 54, and Anita Turner, 51, “fabricating evidence” and being worried about lying to the police.
Mr Turner, who runs a jewellery shop his son works in part-time, is alleged to have used bleach to destroy a letter his son is said to have written saying he killed Emily.
Ms Turner took a coat from the scene of the death, it is also alleged. They both deny perverting the course of justice. Turner also denies perverting the course of justice.
Emily was born in Britain but her family emigrated to Auckland, New Zealand, when she was nine. She returned to live with her grandparents in Bournemouth to study.
The case was adjourned until tomorrow when Turner is expected to continue his evidence.
British police reviewing the disappearance of Madeleine McCann say they believe she could still be alive five years after she went missing in Portugal and urged authorities there to reopen their search.
The Scotland Yard team sifting through a wealth of material relating to the youngster, who vanished in 2007, said overnight that they had identified 195 “investigative opportunities” that could be followed up.
They also urged the Portuguese judiciary to allow the case to be reopened, saying Portuguese police also wanted to re-start the search.
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How she might look like now … an undated handout picture of missing British girl Madeleine McCann taken when she was three years-old (left) and a computer generated handout image released by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) showing an age progression picture of how police believe Madeleine would look like today (right), aged nine. Photo: AFP/Metropolitan Police Service
Scotland Yard renewed their appeal for information as they released a computer-generated image, created by experts, of how Madeleine might look now approaching what would be her ninth birthday on May 12.
Madeleine, who was almost four at the time, disappeared from the family’s holiday flat in Praia da Luz on the Portuguese south coast on May 3, 2007 while her parents were at dinner.
“We genuinely believe there is a possibility that she is alive,” said Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood from Scotland Yard’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command, who is leading the investigative review.
“And we are currently developing material which we believe represents genuinely new information,” he told reporters.
“We are working on the basis of two possibilities here: one is that Madeleine is still alive; and the second that she is sadly dead.
“Our drive on both scenarios is in equal measure.”
He said the review, launched last year, was a quarter of the way through its work.
Redwood said his 37-strong team had at least 40,000 pieces of evidence to go through, containing around 100,000 pages – some needing time-consuming translation.
“We believe that is the only way that we can properly establish what has happened to Madeleine McCann and ultimately bring closure by solving this case,” he said.
Investigations showed what appeared to be “gaps” in the forensic timeline which led to the possibility of her still being alive.
“I am satisfied that there are opportunities there for Madeleine McCann to have been taken as part of a criminal act,” Redwood said.
“Within that, we can see unanswered questions.”
Among the 195 potential leads, “some of those are to do with sightings”, he said.
Redwood said if they found something “red hot”, then pan-European procedures were in place for action.
He added: “Our aspiration is to get this case reopened. My colleagues in Portugal want to reopen the case… they are completely engaged and totally committed.”
Redwood’s team has been working on material from the Portuguese investigation, enquiries in Britain and the work of private investigators.
He urged the public to come forward with any information.
The British investigation has so far cost around £2 million ($3.1 million).
Madeleine’s parents Gerry and Kate McCann have never abandoned their high-profile campaign to find their eldest daughter.
They are “encouraged” by the review, their spokesman Clarence Mitchell told reporters.
“They have drawn great strength from this whole process. They feel that, finally, a proper investigative procedure is now being applied to the search,” he said.
“A hundred and ninety-five potential leads, five years on, is still quite substantial and it only takes one of those to be the key to unlocking this.
“The answer lies somewhere in all of that mountain of information. It feels like there still is momentum in the case.”
OSLO: The teenagers he killed were not innocent non-political children but people guilty of upholding multicultural positions, the mass killer Anders Behring Breivik told a court yesterday.
He said the youth wing of the Norwegian Labour Party that he attacked was akin to the Hitler Youth movement, indoctrinating young people into hatred of Norway’s cultural heritage.
”I have carried out the most sophisticated and spectacular political attack committed in Europe since the Second World War,” he bragged.
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Giving evidence … Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik arrives for the second day of his terrorism and murder trial. Photo: Reuters
Breivik is being tried on terrorism charges after killing 77 people last July in a bomb attack and a shooting massacre in what he claims was a defence of Norway and Europe against the spread of Islam.
Maintaining he acted out of “goodness, not evil” to prevent a wider civil war, Breivik vowed, “I would have done it again.”
He said his actions were based on good, not evil: ”People who have called me vicious have missed the difference between brutality and evil.”
He could no more be called evil than US commanders in World War II who dropped the atomic bomb to save lives, killing 300,000 people but with noble motives, he said.
If conservatives such as himself could change policies to prevent immigration ”by executing 70 people, that will contribute to upholding our values and culture and will help prevent civil war in Norway in the future and prevent further people from dying”.
Breivik said he had been demonised in the media as possessing a low IQ, being a loser, having a longing for his father and an incestuous relationship with his mother because ”cultural Marxists” feared his views.
He said the European leaders Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and David Cameron had all admitted that multiculturalism in Europe had failed and that mass immigration had led to economic loss and social problems.
Beginning five days of his own testimony, Breivik read at high speed a dense 13-page statement he had written in prison in which he said that Norway and the rest of Europe had not had real democracy since between the two world wars because dissent over multiculturalism was stifled by ”cultural elites” such as academics, journalists and feminists.
Breivik likened the ”cultural deconstruction” of the Norwegian people to ”ethnic cleansing”.
He compared himself to the Native American chief Sitting Bull, saying that he and others like him had fought off foreign invaders and tried to preserve the culture of their peoples: ”Were they terrorists or were they heroes? … Militant nationalists are characterised as terrorists because they are fighting for the same ideals.”
He told prosecutors under questioning that a group of militant nationalists he met in 2001 had affected his thinking but that he had little contact with them since then as they decided to operate using one-man cells to avoid detection.
He said he drew his mandate for violent action from international human rights, which gave peoples the right to avoid their own elimination.
Breivik said he had planned his assaults as suicide attacks and had not expected to survive the day. He said this meant the psychiatric diagnosis of narcissism was wrong: ”A narcissist would never sacrifice his life for anyone or anything.”
He said he had become emotional in court on Monday watching a video he had created because it made him think about how ”my country and my ethnic group, they are dying”.
Breivik has told police he committed the killings to defend Norway and Europe against Muslim dominance and pleaded not guilty on the grounds of necessity.
Under Norwegian law, necessity means a person may not be punished for taking action to defend another person or another person’s property from an otherwise unavoidable danger.
On trial … Anders Behring Breivik. Photo: AP
Murder accused admits death threats against Kiwi Emily
May 9th, 2012A wealthy jeweller’s son accused of murdering his aspiring model girlfriend in a jealous rage admitted to a jury today that he had threatened to kill her 10 or 15 times during their volatile relationship.
Elliot Turner, 20, said he never meant it and claimed his alleged victim, Emily Longley, said the same thing and phrases like “I hate you” during their rows.
Turner denies strangling 17-year-old Emily in his bedroom in Bournemouth in May last year.
He said the pair got on well when they met and their relationship soon became sexual in December after they went out for a meal on a double date
“We instantly clicked. We had similar interests, similar choice of drinks. She shared my food – it was sweet and sour chicken I think,” he told the jury at Winchester Crown Court.
“We just got on a like a house on fire. It was amazing how well we got on. It was a really, really good time.”
Turner explained that there were arguments but they were “petty”, he said.
The jury heard that Turner denied he was obsessive about Emily but he became aware that she had been texting and talking to other men after looking at her Facebook page.
He also feared she had rekindled a relationship with an ex-boyfriend called Leon Patterson when she returned home to see her family in New Zealand in March last year.
He admitted that on the evening before she died he had called her a “whore” after they met up and she was wearing very short shorts, a leopard print bra and a small waistcoat, which Turner said meant he could see her breasts.
“I did say some harsh things, it’s true,” he said.
He also admitted that he assaulted her in a bar and threatened to kill her the same night after she poured drinks on him as they argued in a booth.
“Stupidly I grabbed Emily by the waist towards where I was sitting. She came towards me and her legs were against the end of the booth. I was just swearing – saying things I didn’t mean, which I regret now, but at the time I didn’t know what had come over me.”
Turner also told the jury he wanted to buy Emily a pink sapphire commitment ring and that he had been told some things about her past and her history of self-harming.
He denied talking to a friend, Tom Crowe, about how to kill Emily the day before she died, calling the accusation “rubbish”, but said he had been unfaithful to the business studies student during their relationship.
The jury was also told that Turner had received a harassment warning letter from the police in January 2008 when he was 16, telling him not to contact an ex-girlfriend.
The prosecution alleges that heavily built Turner strangled the part-time Topshop assistant and that he was a violent and jealous boyfriend who feared Emily was being unfaithful.
He went “absolutely nuts”, it is claimed, in a culmination of a month of anger and upset over his suspicions she was “twisting his heart”.
When arrested he had his passport in his pocket and bags packed, the court heard.
The court has heard he told paramedics the couple argued and Emily attacked him. He says he defended himself and when he woke up she was dead.
He told officers at the scene: “I never meant to harm her, I just defended myself.” He then made no comment in police interviews.
Computers seized from his home had Google searches for “death by strangulation” and “how to get out of being charged for murder”.
Police bugged the family home and recorded Turner’s parents, Leigh Turner, 54, and Anita Turner, 51, “fabricating evidence” and being worried about lying to the police.
Mr Turner, who runs a jewellery shop his son works in part-time, is alleged to have used bleach to destroy a letter his son is said to have written saying he killed Emily.
Ms Turner took a coat from the scene of the death, it is also alleged. They both deny perverting the course of justice. Turner also denies perverting the course of justice.
Emily was born in Britain but her family emigrated to Auckland, New Zealand, when she was nine. She returned to live with her grandparents in Bournemouth to study.
The case was adjourned until tomorrow when Turner is expected to continue his evidence.
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