Major terrorist attack in Oslo, Norway

Yes, the apprehended man responsible for the Utøya shootings is a Norwegian, 32, belonging to extreme right-wing. Freemason. He apparently owned a lot of weapons privately and started a small vegetable growing business back in 2009, which is thought to be a possible source for explosives (fertilizers).

The staggering increase in deathtoll at Utøya is out of this world. But the police is still expecting it to rise. Yes I'm Norwegian. I was at a party here in Beijing when it all happened. Many classmates present had close family working in the government offices at the time, so the mood changed dramatically.

Maggern said:

Yes, the apprehended man responsible for the Utøya shootings is a Norwegian, 32, belonging to extreme right-wing. Freemason. He apparently owned a lot of weapons privately and started a small vegetable growing business back in 2009, which is thought to be a possible source for explosives (fertilizers).

The staggering increase in deathtoll at Utøya is out of this world. But the police is still expecting it to rise. Yes I'm Norwegian. I was at a party here in Beijing when it all happened. Many classmates present had close family working in the government offices at the time, so the mood changed dramatically.

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That is sad to know. Hope your friend's family members are ok.

Maggern said:

Yes, the apprehended man responsible for the Utøya shootings is a Norwegian, 32, belonging to extreme right-wing. Freemason. He apparently owned a lot of weapons privately and started a small vegetable growing business back in 2009, which is thought to be a possible source for explosives (fertilizers).

The staggering increase in deathtoll at Utøya is out of this world. But the police is still expecting it to rise. Yes I'm Norwegian. I was at a party here in Beijing when it all happened. Many classmates present had close family working in the government offices at the time, so the mood changed dramatically.

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freemasons...now all those conspiracy theorists will start to come out with their NWO stuff again. hope everything in norway will be alright soon

Maggern said:

Yes, the apprehended man responsible for the Utøya shootings is a Norwegian, 32, belonging to extreme right-wing. Freemason. He apparently owned a lot of weapons privately and started a small vegetable growing business back in 2009, which is thought to be a possible source for explosives (fertilizers).

The staggering increase in deathtoll at Utøya is out of this world. But the police is still expecting it to rise. Yes I'm Norwegian. I was at a party here in Beijing when it all happened. Many classmates present had close family working in the government offices at the time, so the mood changed dramatically.

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Seems like a moment you'll vividly remember for the rest of your life. I expected the death toll to rise, but not that dramatically. Perhaps I should reevaluate what I said earlier about the security forces responding quickly, as the higher death toll indicates that they had a longer response time.

As recently as 8 hours ago, the attacker's Facebook was still up. I saw it. His content was mostly restricted, but there was nothing in there that I saw that looked out of the ordinary. There were a few news reports I saw that said he "was a self identified conservative and Christian". That's what his religious and political info on Facebook said, so I'm pretty sure that's where the reporters found that information, which is a bit different if, for example, they got that information from his neighbors or something.

It seems this is shaping up to be a "mad-bomber" plot. This is strange to me. It's not outside of the realm of possibility, but there's a lot of loose ends. For example the claim of responsibility by a radical Muslim group. And this attack seems to be pretty sophisticated to be the work of one man. I suppose we'll have to wait for more info.

plawolf said:

Does Norway have the death penalty? Rarely would it be so richly deserved.

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We don't. The harshest punishment by Norwegian law (which is granted in the case of terrorist attacks) is 21 years imprisonment, which is what this guy is looking at if he is convicted.

siegecrossbow said:

That is sad to know. Hope your friend's family members are ok.

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Thank you. A former classmate's cousin ended up in hospital and had to go through surgery, but is now relatively well. The uncle of another friend had left before the blast. I haven't spoken to the others yet. They are still very much unsure what the situation is downtown in Oslo. They have to get experts to examine the structural integrity of the government highrise before they can go in and search it properly. Who knows what they might find.

The deathtoll at Utøya has risen to 84, so that's 91 in total, with ten-twenty suffering life-threatening or severe injuries, whose situation is still unstable. Most of them gunshot-wounds. They are still in the process of combing through Utøya and adjacent waters (the gunman shot at some of the teenagers trying to swim off the island).

Why do you think it would be strange for just one man to be able to arrange this?

If you have a working knowledge of chemistry and explosives, plus access to firearms, some competence in their use and the ability to source a uniform, none of this seems overly difficult to carry out.

In large but sparsely populated countries, especially in more remote rural areas, you tend to need to be more hands on and "practical" than your fellows that live in more urban or generally populace areas.

I think it just illustrates just how lethal one dedicated individual with a little know-how can actually be. It also highlights the eyebrow raising serial ineffectiveness of other "professional" terror organisations.

SampanViking said:

Why do you think it would be strange for just one man to be able to arrange this?

If you have a working knowledge of chemistry and explosives, plus access to firearms, some competence in their use and the ability to source a uniform, none of this seems overly difficult to carry out.

In large but sparsely populated countries, especially in more remote rural areas, you tend to need to be more hands on and "practical" than your fellows that live in more urban or generally populace areas.

I think it just illustrates just how lethal one dedicated individual with a little know-how can actually be. It also highlights the eyebrow raising serial ineffectiveness of other "professional" terror organisations.

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yup Norwegians and New Zealanders are very similar.

I think most terror organisations apart from the Chechans have been less effective because post 9/11 they've tried for similar spectacular attacks rather than keeping things simple.

In 1996 in port arthur in Tasmania a gunman shot and killed 36 people. Is was over a large area and not on a small Island like this one in Norway. It would have been very easy to find targets and kill them on such a small Island .

If the gunman had an military asault rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition then it would not be that hard to kill as many people as he did .

Initial reports also said he called a meeting in the camp claiming he had information on the Oslo bombing. When everyone gathered, he opened fire into the densely packed crowd.

With a military automatic rifle, the casualties from that could have been gruesomely high. My first thought when the death toll jumped so massively was this must be the cause.

21 years in prison is a joke for this crime. With the 84 dead confirmed already, that's what, 4 months in prison for each murder? It would be a travesty and grave injustice to the families of the victims if that is his punishment for such terrible crimes.

plawolf said:

Initial reports also said he called a meeting in the camp claiming he had information on the Oslo bombing. When everyone gathered, he opened fire into the densely packed crowd.

With a military automatic rifle, the casualties from that could have been gruesomely high. My first thought when the death toll jumped so massively was this must be the cause.

21 years in prison is a joke for this crime. With the 84 dead confirmed already, that's what, 4 months in prison for each murder? It would be a travesty and grave injustice to the families of the victims if that is his punishment for such terrible crimes.

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Though I'm by no means a legal scholar, I think Norwegian law works differently in this case than American. In cases like this, you don't get one conviction per death, but rather you get a conviction for mass murder, with the number of deaths only relating to the gravity of the crime. Personally, I think it's kinda weird to sentence someone to 500-600 years in prison...21 years is in any case the most severe punishment anyone can be subjected to. Which is why it was applied to terrorist attacks.