Norway gunman asks court for ‘immediate release’

Anders Behring Breivik, a right-wing extremist who confessed to a bombing and mass shooting that killed 77 people on July 22, 2011, arrives for a detention hearing at a court in Oslo, Norway, Monday, Feb. 6, 2012. About 100 survivors and relatives of the victims of the July 22 massacre attended the hearing in Oslo's district court - expected to decide to keep Breivik in jail until his trial begins in April. (AP Photo/Heiko Junge, Scanpix Norway) NORWAY OUT

OSLO — The Norway gunman who killed 77 people in twin attacks in July asked an Oslo court Monday to free him immediately, repeatedly provoking survivors seated in the courtroom who responded by deriding him.

Showing no sign of remorse, 32-year-old rightwing extremist Anders Behring Breivik told the court his massacre was “a preventive attack against state traitors” who were guilty of a kind of “ethnic cleansing” because of their support for a multi-cultural society.

“I do not accept imprisonment. I demand to be immediately released,” he told the court before it ordered that he be held in detention until his trial opens on April 16.

Hollow laughter erupted in the rows where several dozen survivors and families of the victims were seated, when Behring Breivik twice demanded his immediate release.

Wearing a dark suit and pale blue tie, Behring Breivik entered the courtroom and touched his heart with his handcuffed fists, then lifted them straight out toward those seated in the courtroom, in what his lawyer Geir Lippestad described as a “right-wing extremist salute.”

Full story: Norway gunman asks court for ‘immediate release’