Norway terrorist attacks: 'I remember his face just like it was yesterday'

In an Edinburgh cafe, as police outside corral the opposing masses of Scottish Defence League protesters and Unite Against Fascism campaigners who have gathered on the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, John tells me about a cold July day on a Norwegian island called Utøya, when he found himself caught up in one of the greatest human tragedies of recent times.

On 22 July 2011, a far-right extremist named Anders Behring Breivik murdered 69 people, mostly teenagers, in cold blood on Utøya, hours after carrying out the bombing of a government building in Oslo which claimed eight more lives.

John — not his real name — is a 22-year-old student at Edinburgh Napier University. He met Breivik that day: they exchanged pleasantries, and John unwittingly helped unload cases of ammunition from the boat that ferries visitors to and from the island.

John’s 17-year-old brother Anzor was also on Utøya island that day. In the chaotic aftermath of the attack, and amid reports that Breivik had not acted alone, Anzor was arrested by police and held in a cell adjacent to Breivik’s for 17 hours on suspicion of being an accomplice in the attack.

“I wasn’t supposed to be on the island,” he tells me matter-of-factly. “I went there because my brother was there, and his friend asked me if I would come and help with organising some stuff, so I thought to myself: why not? I’ve got nothing to do. Why not?”

Utøya sits just 500 metres of the mainland, and is owned by the youth wing of Norway’s governing Labour Party. Each summer, the Workers’ Youth League organise a summer camp there. On 22 July, a social event was to take place at the main campsite, to thank the young volunteers for their hard work and effort.

“I saw him - Anders Breivik,” the student tells me. “I talked to him, because I was there when he arrived with the boat. He was a normal guy. But he had two massive cases - black suitcases - and he asked us if we could help him lift them from the boat onto the island, because they were so heavy.”

The gunman was dressed as a policeman - highly trusted and respected individuals in Norway - and with the gathering that afternoon it seemed normal for there to be extra security, especially after the Oslo bombings only hours before.

He didn’t think twice about helping Breivik, he says. “Someone in the street asks you [for help], especially a policeman, you say ‘yes, of course, why not?’ They were so heavy. I thought it wasn’t normal for a suitcase this size to be so heavy.

“I never asked him what was in the case, but we all assumed it was equipment for the party - maybe some speakers? I don’t know. It could have been anything.”
“I wouldn’t say he was friendly, but if you asked he answered. He was quite polite. He wasn’t smiling or laughing - he was serious, but he seemed alright. He was a normal guy.”

John explains how he helped carry the cases onto the island, and into a small car to be taken from the pier to the main campsite to be met by organisers, who had previously received a call saying that police were coming to the island as an added security precaution. As Breivik drove off, the student remained at the water’s edge, talking to his friends.

A few minutes later, they heard the first gunshots — two single shots fired close together, he says, then a few seconds’ pause before a seemingly incessant burst of gunfire. The student and his friends were sitting on the shore drinking beer when crowds of people came running through the woods, screaming and crying.

“I saw something I’ve never seen before,” he says. “They were running as a group, and when people get panicked they don’t know what they’re doing, so they just run. So he came after them. He was saying ‘Come here, I’ll help you. Why are you running from me? Come to me, I’ll help you.’” The fact that Breivik was dressed as a police officer only added to the confusion.

John describes a scene of horror as the gunman fired into the fleeing crowd, and perhaps 25 people fell to the ground. “Blood everywhere. I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t want to. It was a horrible picture,” he says, lowering his gaze.

They fled along the right-hand side of the island, knowing that there they would find patches of woodland and caves in which they could seek refuge. They thought about trying to overpower the shooter, but his height and muscular physique would have made it almost impossible.

“When I was running with my friends, it was chaos, because people were running all around. You could see dead bodies - people were screaming, because somebody lost their friend, brother, sister.”

Shock set in. To survive, many hid under the bodies of their friends and family members. Two Norwegian boys, no older than eight or nine, stood motionless in the panic, until the Edinburgh student picked them up and carried them to safety. They were so frozen with fear, he says, that they didn’t even cry.

The gunman wore a bulletproof vest, and according to witnesses carried so many firearms that there was no need to reload: he would just empty one gun, drop it, and start firing with a fresh weapon.

“I’ve never seen so many people dying at the same time... so many young people, and there’s just one guy walking around shooting everybody,” he says, shaking his head, unable to understand.

Elsewhere on the island, 17-year-old Anzor was also fleeing for his life. He urged groups of people to spread out, but in the chaos they didn’t hear and were murdered before his eyes. One of his friends, a 17-year-old Somalian boy, was shot in the neck and died as Anzor tried to carry him to safety.

Anzor and a Norwegian boy escaped onto the rocks, hanging just below the lip of a cliff with nothing but the root of a tree to hold on to. At one point, they saw the gunman’s feet linger near the edge of the cliff. He did not look down. After 40 minutes hanging there, Anzor’s companion was unable to hold on any longer. He fell to his death on the rocks eleven metres below. He was just 18 years old.

In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, confusion set in. People crept out from their hiding places, many screaming and crying in shock. Breivik had killed nine children in the last moments of his rampage, while police waited for boats to take them across to the island, unable to act. By the time he surrendered, 69 people were dead on Utøya.

Anzor had clung onto that tree-root for two hours before it seemed safe to emerge. He quickly found two of his closest friends: Movsar Dzhamayev, 17 and Rustam Daudov, 16. They are the Chechen youths who managed to save 23 others by leading them to the relative safety of a cave, and who threw stones at the attacker to distract him from killing.

Anzor thought the ordeal was finally over, until he was arrested by police on suspicion of working with Breivik. The arresting officers, Anzor said later, didn’t believe that he was the same person shown on his identification documents, and that they likened his shaved head to the style favoured by neo-Nazis.

He spent 17 hours in the cell next to Breivik, the man who had killed so many of his friends. He was not able to make a telephone call, and his family feared that he was among the dead. They spent hours driving around hospitals and morgues, desperately searching for him.

“We — me and my parents — we thought he was dead,” says John. “We were looking for his body so we could make a proper funeral, but we couldn’t find him and the police wouldn’t allow him to give us a call. I was helping with the dead bodies, and I was looking for him. I wanted to find his body, at least. I wanted to see that he was dead, because there were so many people who tried to swim to shore and Breivik shot them, and their bodies were underwater.”

Anzor was eventually released from custody, and later received a personal apology from Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg. As Norway comes to terms with the horror of the attacks, questions have been raised about why the police were unable to intervene sooner, and about Anzor’s treatment while he was in custody. Police officials have apologised for the fact that Anzor, a minor under Norwegian law, was not able to contact his family while he was being held. But now, John says, they just want to get on with their lives.

At this point in our interview, the weather takes a turn. It’s late in the day. My interviewee has remained calm throughout our conversation, rage bubbling up quickly suppressed. The enormity of the tragedy on Utøya is incomprehensible, and Breivik’s motives — if he had any — may never be understood, but as we part he gives his final judgment of the murderer; one that echoes the senselessness of his actions.

“I remember his face just like it was yesterday. You could see that he was not thinking of the children he was shooting. He was not thinking about what he was doing. You could see the calm on his face,” he says. “He was not a psycho, he knew what he was doing.

“I don’t know how a person can be so cold and cruel. I don’t know. I can’t understand this guy. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it, but if you ask me if I feel more or less safe now... yes, I do.”