Anders Behring Breivik Trial: Killer Comes Face To Face With Oslo Bomb Blast Survivors

Norwegian Mass Killer Face to Face With Survivors Of Massacre

Anders Behring Breivik has come face-to-face with survivors of the two attacks he carried out last year in Norway that killed 77 people and left many injured.

He added that their judgment had been "clouded" by their emotional response to the attacks. An earlier assessment had found him sane.

The 33-year-old was clearly irritated during the proceedings and denounced the psychiatric report as "evil fabrications".

Breivik has admitted to carrying out the attacks on 22 July last year, when he first bombed Oslo's government district, killing eight people. That was followed by the mass shootings on the island of Utoya, where he killed 69 people attending a youth camp held by the ruling Labour Party.

If he is found guilty, Breivik can expect to serve 21 years in prison although most commentators believe he may never be freed if regarded as a danger to society. However, if ruled as insane, he would be placed under psychiatric care.

Testimony presented to the court on Wednesday described the carnage that followed his bomb attack and the horrendous injuries suffered by survivors. Breivik remained impassive throughout, demonstrating no remorse as he continued to put the blame for his actions on Norway's Labour government.

The court heard from survivors of the bomb attack, including one victim who now suffers from a loss of hearing after the blast, another who is still too scared to visit Oslo city centre, a third who is still recovering from losing a leg in the explosion and who has endured more than 12 operations since. One man, Eivind Dahl Thoresen, talked of how he spent three weeks in hospital after being hit by debris and whose doctors are still finding pieces of shrapnel in his body.

The 26-year-old gave his account of the attack with Breivik sitting just a few feet away from him.

Among those expected in the courtroom on Wednesday was Adrian Pracon who survived the massacre on Utoya. Speaking to The Huffington Post this week, the 21-year-old had already seen many of his friends gunned down by Breivik and remembers the moment when the killer aimed the gun at him.

Pracon described how, when standing knee-deep in water off the island and in the sights of Breivik, he thought he was going to die as the murderer aimed his gun at him.

"All he had to do was squeeze the trigger," he described later, in a book produced with writer Erik Moller Solheim.

But for some reason, Breivik let him go and although Pracon would be shot later - in the shoulder, at point-black range, while playing dead near a pile of bodies - he survived his harrowing experience.

He has repeatedly questioned why he was spared and got an answer when Breivik told the court that he shot some and not others because "certain people looked more leftist than others".

The trial continues.

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