Mourning period in Norway ends with remembrance service

Norway's official mourning period for victims of a bombing and shooting rampage ends Sunday with a national remembrance ceremony in Oslo.

The Oslo bombing and Utoya island shooting killed a total of 77 people last month.

The ceremony comes a day after survivors returned for the first time to the site of the island shooting, where

the gunman killed 69 people. He also bombed the Oslo government buildings on the same day, killing eight more people.

Most of the victims were at a political summer camp held by the youth wing of the governing Labour Party at the time of the July 22 shooting attack.

Most survivors made it out alive by hiding among rocks or diving into the chilly waters around the island.

Before the survivors' visit, relatives of those killed traveled to the island Friday for the first time to see where their loved ones spent their final moments.

Many lit candles and left flowers in makeshift shrines.

The suspect in both attacks, Anders Breivik, was ordered held in isolation for four more weeks Friday after appearing before a judge in Oslo.

If removed from isolation, there's danger that he will tamper with evidence and hinder the police investigation, the judge said.

Breivik, 32, had told the court that being held in isolation is "boring, monotonous and a sadistic method of torture," the judge said.

The suspect admitted the attacks, a judge and his lawyer say, but has pleaded not guilty in court.

Experts investigate code in Breivik manifesto

A group of computer security experts are working to decode what they believe could be hidden messages in the Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik's manifesto.

Brievik emailed the 1500-page document to hundreds of online contacts less than 90 minutes before he

detonated a bomb in Oslo city centre last month and shot dozens of young people at a summer camp.

It contained links to newpaper articles, blogs and other material that the killer used to make claims about the threat he perceived from multiculturalism.

But analysis of the document by Rolf Frøysa, the chief technology officer of a Norwegian broadband firm, revealed a series of links that did not lead to any website.

”I was on vacation in Turkey when I heard about Breivik’s bombing,” he told The Telegraph.

Large parts of the document were plagiarized from the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, an American mail bomber who raged against “Industrial Society and Its Future” in his own manifesto in 1995. When he was eventually captured, authorities found reams of notes Kaczynski had written in a code that was not cracked for 10 years.

“I was horrified and read about how Breivik may have taken inspiration from the Unabomber,” said Mr Frøysa.

”I started to wonder whether Breiviok’s manifesto could also contain similar codes.”

Mr Frøysa wrote a computer programme to test the links within the document, and found the 46 apparently broken links. All efforts to make them work, such as trying them out on so-called ”darknets”, which are private and typically anonymoyus filesharing networks with different protocols to the public internet, were unsuccessful.

But further study of the numbers within them revealed a worrying pattern.

”I suddenly saw that some of the work I had been doing suggested they could be GPS coordinates,” said Mr Frøysa.

The first ”coordinates” he tried out on Google Maps pointed directly at a train station in central Liverpool. The rest of the numbers also appeared to correspond to major sites across Europe.

Given Breivik’s claims to Norwegian authorities that he was part of a larger network of right wing extremists, Mr Frøysa and some friends who were by now working with him became concerned and reported their findings to police. They also opened up the project to a wider online community of around 300 people, including experts on encryption and mathematics.

”It could just be a hoax or part of his [Breivik’s] PR strategy,” said Mr Frøysa. ”but we need to investigate this document.”

The idea that the numbers represent GPS coordinates is currently the group’s leading theory, but Mr Frøysa said he they were keeping an open mind and invited others to join in the analysis.

”The Norwegian police are busy dealing with their biggest case since World War Two. When we’re finished this document should be seen as total rubbish,” he said.

Remembering Norway's 'lost generation'(Photo-Video)

Norway seemed to stand still, not once, but several times today. Exactly a week after Anders Behring Breivik first bombed government buildings in central Oslo, then shot at youngsters on the island of Utoeya, the nation took the chance to reflect.

At 1300 local time (1100 GMT), at the "folkhus" or people's house, Norway's prime minister joined members

of the Labour Party to remember the dead.

Colleagues and friends of those who died hugged each other after moving readings and songs, a single rose held by each.

The prime minister spoke for many who feel that it is determination that will get them through the grief.

"It is impossible to comprehend what these young people went through during these gruesome hours. But we have to go on and live with the burden of the 22 July. It will be hard. It will be difficult. But together in unity, we will manage," he said.

'Even more love'

At the same time, a short ferry ride away, another life was remembered. In a leafy and idyllic setting, the small wooden church in Nesodden saw its first-ever Muslim burial, Christian pastor and Muslim imam united to lead the remembrance of Bano Rashid, a popular and outgoing 18-year-old of Kurdish decent.

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I hope Bano can be a symbol for Norway's youth, for Christian youth, for Muslim youth, for Kurdish youth - to show everyone that they can follow their dreams”

Siva Jagdar

Childhood friend of Bano Rashid

Shot at her annual summer camp on Utoeya, she was a popular, lively young woman who worked as an activist for the Labour Party here, and had ambitions to be a politician.

Her bright and optimistic face smiled out of the photo held aloft at the front of her funeral procession. With dignity through tears, her sister walked with her coffin - she too was at the camp, but survived Mr Breivik's massacre.

Ms Rashid's family followed behind. Onlookers confirmed that they are part of a well-integrated Kurdish community here, who left Iraq over 15 years ago. "The answer must not be hatred, but even more love," her mother Beyan told the attending media afterwards.

The doors of the church were left open, and the crowd outside stood in the fierce sunshine to hear the service. Many had to leave the service at times to sit under nearby trees, as the heat and emotion became too much. The message here too was that Norwegians do not want to meet intolerance with intolerance.

"An imam and a pastor side by side for this funeral is a very powerful message," Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said after the service.

Not bowed

Traditionally reserved, the Norwegians have met the tragedy with dignity - almost everyone here refers to meeting Mr Breivik's hate "with love". One student who didn't want to be named told us that she felt sorry for him. "He's obviously a very sick man," she said.

Mr Breivik was questioned again today, and police confirmed they do not think he is linked to a network of terrorists, as he has proclaimed in his "manifesto", a 7,000-word document published on the internet shortly before his rampage.

Police lawyer Paal Frederik Hjort Kraby said he was calm and controlled during his interview, which today went through his last statement of around 50 pages.

"He was more than willing to explain himself about the things he had done," Mr Kraby said. Mr Breivik's lawyer has already said publicly that he thinks his client is insane.

Police released a new death total of 77 today, up from 76, each death part of what has been described as a "lost generation" of would-be politicians and activists.

Back at the funeral of Ms Rashid, however, her friends would not be bowed.

"Her death won't scare Muslims like me away from politics," said her childhood friend and fellow Kurd, Siva Jagdar.

"If anything she has been an inspiration in life, and I hope she will be an inspiration still, to show Norway what we can be... I hope Bano can be a symbol for Norway's youth, for Christian youth, for Muslim youth, for Kurdish youth. To show everyone that they can follow their dreams."

In Norway, Consensus Cuts 2 Ways

Nearly all Norwegians of a certain age know where they were when Oddvar Bra suddenly broke his ski pole in the final sprint of a championship ski race in 1982, and Norway had to settle for a tie with the Soviet Union. But the common expression, “Where were you when Bra broke his pole?” has suddenly given way to a

darker question — where were you when Anders Behring Breivik was killing Norway’s children?

July 22, the day Mr. Breivik killed at least 76 people, shook a peaceful nation to the core. But for many Norwegians it is also an indelible mark of a country that has evolved away from the monoethnic, egalitarian culture that knew tragedy as a setback in Nordic competition.

Today, more than 11 percent of the population of some 4.9 million were born someplace else — Pakistan, Sweden, Poland, Somalia, Eritrea, Iraq. And the cultural shock of diversity, especially incorporating the growing number of nonwhite Muslims, has already meant the rise of a moderate anti-immigrant party, the Progress Party, to become the second-largest in Norway.

The young people Mr. Breivik shot at a summer camp on the island of Utoya were all Norwegians, but some were the children of immigrants, who have now been memorialized in the country’s greatest modern disaster.

“When you are confronted with multicultural immigration, something happens,” said Grete Brochmann, a sociologist at the University of Oslo. “That’s the core of the matter right now, and it’s a great challenge to the Norwegian model.”

Norway’s leaders, from the royal family on down, have all praised the country’s solidarity, democracy, equality and tolerance, and all vow that these values will not change. Virtuous, peaceful, generous, consensual — this is the Norwegian self-image, aided by the oil wealth that props up one of the most comprehensive social welfare systems in the world.

Einar Forde, a former Labor Party politician, once said: “We are all social democrats.” And a former prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who was a target of Mr. Breivik’s terror, once remarked: “It is typically Norwegian to be good.”

For all its virtues, the emphasis on consensus here can also promote small-mindedness, smugness and political correctness. That is especially true when newcomers have different notions on certain values, including gender equality and secularism, even in an officially Christian country, that Norwegians hold dear.

“We’re a lucky society for many reasons, and not just oil,” said Ms. Brochmann, citing Norway’s distance from both the euro and the American financial crisis and its strong and transparent democracy.

“But many of these aspects of this consensus society have another side,” she said. “This is also a society of conformism,” she said, citing the “Janteloven,” or Jante law, based on small-town Scandinavian norms that govern group behavior, promoting collectivism and discouraging individual initiative and ambition in a world where no one is anonymous.

Norway is also a strongly patriotic country, independent from Sweden only since 1905, and occupied by the Nazis from 1940 to 1945. So the sense of pride and nationalism here is fierce, and the model built since World War II is strongly defended.

In an interview, Dr. Brundtland noted that Norway had a strongly consensual, cross-party program for almost a decade after World War II before returning to more normal politics. Even then, she said, Norway has “a tradition of trying to formulate and coordinate policies that are broader than what the political system itself would have. We try to have a base that’s broader than the majority.”

Still, she insisted, “it’s not true to say that we have a consensus democracy where we don’t have strong debates and political parties.”

Those debates have also become fiercer on the issue of immigration and integration, Dr. Brundtland conceded, especially with the growing popularity of the Progress Party, a now mainstream group that focuses on an anti-immigration stance. The Progress Party, she said with some distaste, has been pushing acceptable boundaries. “To ask the questions without having any productive answers is not always helpful,” Dr. Brundtland said.

The leader of the Progress Party, Siv Jensen, earned some notoriety in 2009 for using the phrase “stealth Islamization” in a speech, the same year the party became the second-largest in Parliament. Christian Tybring-Gjedde, the head of the party’s Oslo branch, prompted howls of criticism in May when he suggested Muslims were by nature more aggressive than Norwegians.

Even so, such statements are no more provocative than those by right-leaning politicians in other Western European countries, and the party’s stance has resonated with many. Morten Hoglund, a Progress legislator, said the party in recent years has been purging radicals and emphasizing better health care, though he conceded that Mr. Breivik might hurt the party in September’s local elections.

“We have tried as best we can to make sure that we behave in a proper way,” he said. “We are not in the same political family you see with some of the political parties in Europe today.”

But others believe that Progress has helped create the atmosphere in which Mr. Breivik flourished, even if he quit the party because of what he perceived as its moderation.

“There is one political party in this country that has worked with the line of reasoning that the terrorist used to legitimize his atrocities,” said Magnus Marsdal, an author and political analyst. “Of course the Progress Party is not accountable for this guy’s actions, but the sentiments that are spread through political propaganda are not innocent.”

The party plays on the immigrant challenge to religious and cultural uniformity. Some Muslim immigrants, not well-educated, restrict the activities of women, try to arrange marriages, may support genital mutilation and have a degree of homophobia, all of which are cited as adherence to religious or cultural values.

But these values present a direct challenge to the general consensus culture. It is in this area that Islamophobia has reached Norway, together with a more universal resentment of immigrant criminals and “welfare scroungers” of every religion and color.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Oslo, has written extensively on the challenge of immigration to the overriding culture, which features a quiet nationalism. “But there are some unexamined ugly features of Norwegian nationalism that have to do with ethnic nationalism, a feeling of specialness, an element of racism,” Mr. Eriksen said. “Non-ethnic Norwegians are visible and still seen as out of place.”

Minorities think that “if they learn Norwegian, send their kids to school and stop at traffic lights they are 100 percent Norwegian,” he said. But it’s not really true, he said. He cited a prominent Norwegian, Dilek Ayhan, born here of Turkish parents, perfectly fluent, but who is often asked: “Where are you really from?”

There is “a prison of consensus,” Mr. Eriksen said, but it should not be exaggerated and is slowly cracking under the pressure of change. “There is a fairly open debate, but we should be more open and frank about our values,” he said.

Norway urged to answer act of terror with tolerance

OSLO, Norway -- Five days after a terrorist incensed by Norway's culture of tolerance horrified the world, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg issued a call of quiet defiance to his country: Make Norway even more accepting.

"The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation,"

Stoltenberg said Wednesday at a news conference.

His promise in the aftermath of twin attacks that killed 76 people contrasted with the U.S. response after the 9/11 attacks, when the U.S. gave more leeway to perform wiretaps and search records.

It also reflects the difference between the two countries' approaches to terrorism: The U.S. has been frustrated by what it considers Scandinavia's lack of aggressive investigation and arrests.

"I think what we have seen is that there is going to be one Norway before and one Norway after July 22," the prime minister said.

Oslo's government quarter was bombed and dozens were slaughtered at the Labor Party's youth camp July 22. Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian, has confessed to the attacks and said they were necessary to fight what he called Muslim colonization and multiculturalism.

Since the attacks, Stoltenberg and members of the Norwegian royal family have underlined the country's openness by making public appearances with little visible security guarding them.

The national sense of heartbreak is being renewed daily as police release names of the dead; the identities of only 17 of the 68 known to have been killed have been officially confirmed.

One of those named Wednesday was the youngest victim so far -- camper Sharidyn Svebakk-Boehn, who turned 14 five days before the rampage.

An employee of Stoltenberg's office, 51-year-old Anne Lise Holter, was confirmed Wednesday as one of the eight dead in the bomb blast. A stepbrother of Crown Princess Mette-Matrit, police officer Trond Berntsen, 51, was confirmed as one of those killed on the island. He was providing security.

Denmark said Wednesday that a 43-year-old Danish woman, Hanne Balch Fjalestad, was the first confirmed foreign death. She was a medic at the youth camp.

Stoltenberg said an independent commission will be formed to investigate the attacks and determine what can be learned from the response. Police have been criticized for the length of time it took them to reach the island.

The commission also is to help survivors and relatives, and there will be a monument built to commemorate the victims' lives.

Scores killed in Norway attack

Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old suspect in Friday's attacks in Norway, held right-wing views, say police.
Police chief Sveinung Sponheim said his internet postings "suggest that he has some political traits directed

toward the right, and anti-Muslim views".
"But whether that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen," he told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
Little is currently known about him apart from what has appeared on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter - and these entries appear to have been set up just days ago.
On the Facebook page attributed to him, he describes himself as a Christian and a conservative. The Facebook page is no longer available but it also listed interests such as body-building and freemasonry.
The gunman was described by witnesses who saw him on Utoeya island as tall and blond - and dressed in a police uniform. The image of him posted on Facebook depict a blond, blue-eyed man.
The Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang quoted a friend as saying that the suspect turned to right-wing extremism when in his late 20s. The paper also said that he participated in online forums expressing strong nationalistic views.
Bomb ingredient
Mr Breivik is thought to have studied at the Oslo Commerce School and his work is listed as Breivik Geofarm, a company Norwegian media is describing as a farming sole proprietorship.
The company was set up to cultivate vegetables, melons, roots and tubers, Norway's TV2 says, and speculation in local media is rife that through such a link he may have had access to fertiliser, an ingredient used in bomb-making.
A Twitter account attributed to the suspect has also emerged but it only has one post, which is a quote from philosopher John Stuart Mill: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests."
As with his Facebook page, the tweet was posted on 17 July.
It reveals very little about the man except an interest in libertarianism and a clear belief in the power of the individual.