The Norwegian man charged with attacks in and near Oslo, killing over 90 people, has admitted “to the facts” of the case, the police and his lawyer said on Sunday, and claims to have acted alone in a strike eerily foretold in a detailed manifesto calling for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination.
But, acting police chief Sveinung Sponheim told a news conference, “he is not admitting criminal guilt” and his claim to have acted alone contrasted with “some of the witness statements,” Reuters reported.
The attacks on Friday — a huge bombing in central Oslo closely followed by a bloody rampage against young people on nearby Utoya island — was the deadliest attack in this Nordic nation since World War II, and stunned many in a population of some five million used to seeing their land as a haven of peace.
The police said on Sunday that the toll had risen from 92 to 93 people with the death of one of 97 earlier reported injured in the attacks. Most of the bodies were found on Utoya island, where young people from the dominant Labor Party had gathered for an annual camp.
Police identified the suspect as Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, while acquaintances described him as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.
