I would have done it again, Norwegian killer says

Dubai For two hours in July, deranged right-wing militant Anders Behring Breivik gunned down all before him in a hate-fuelled rampage.

Yesterday, in a Norwegian courtroom, Breivik unleashed a hate-filled venomous salvo against Muslims.

"I would have done it again," he said, boasting that he acted "out of goodness, not evil" as he lashed out at Norwegian and European governments for embracing immigration and multiculturalism.

Ruled sane enough to stand trial, Breivik said: "I have done the most sophisticated and spectacular political act committed in Europe since [the Second World War]," the Oslo native told a courtroom in the capital yesterday. "This won't be the last time this happens in Europe."

The 33-year-old killed 69 people, some as young as 14, at a Labour Party youth camp on Utoeya island and detonated a car bomb by the prime minister's office, taking eight lives.

Islamophobia

Speaking to Gulf News yesterday from the University of Copenhagen's Centre of European Islamic Thought, Prof Jorgen Nielsen said that Islamophobia in Europe is rising as a result of the decline of nation states and because of the economic crisis gripping the continent.

"There's a real sense of powerlessness because of the move in sovereignty from small nation states to the European Union," he said. "And there's a correlation between the decline in the economy to a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment.

"Right-wing parties are only too willing to latch onto that sentiment and use it for their own political ends," Nielsen said, adding that burqa ban, identification laws, bans on minarets, the Danish cartoons' issue and growing hate attacks on members of the Muslim community were all symptoms of a growing sense of Islamophobia across the continent.

"I am not scared by the prospect of being in prison all my life," Breivik told the court yesterday.

"I was born in a prison where I could not express my beliefs. This prison is called Norway."