Man sets himself on fire outside Breivik courthouse

Tuesday, 15 May 2012

Anders Behring has been charged with committing terrorist acts when he bombed a government building in Oslo, killing eight people, before shooting dead another 69 in his rampage on Utoeya. (Reuters)

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By Al Arabiya with Agencies

A man set himself on fire on Tuesday outside an Oslo courthouse where Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik is on trial for murdering 77 people last July, police said.


“At 1:42 pm (1142 GMT) a person set himself on fire outside the district court... Health workers have taken him to Ullevaal Hospital with burn injuries,” Finn Belle of the Oslo police told AFP, saying the extent of the injuries remained unclear.


The man, who police said was seriously injured, was stopped as he tried to break through the security fence around the courthouse.


“The man crossed the street and set himself on fire,” Kjell Jan Kvarme, head of police security operations outside the courthouse, said.

“Police officers pulled off his clothes and put out the fire.”

Commercial broadcaster TV2 quoted a witness as saying the man had shouted in Swedish: “Shoot me! Shoot me!”

Kvarme said the man’s motive was not known and that there was no evidence so far to say it was linked to the Breivik trial.

Inside the courthouse, on the 19th day of Breivik’s trial, young people wounded in his massacre were testifying about the shooting spree on the island of Utoeya on July 22.

Breivik has been charged with committing terrorist acts when he bombed a government building in Oslo, killing eight people, before shooting dead another 69 in his rampage on Utoeya.

The victims were there for a summer camp of the ruling Labor Party’s youth wing, and the youngest had just celebrated her 14th birthday.

Breivik has confessed to the killings but has refused to plead guilty, insisting the shootings were “cruel but necessary” to stop the Labor Party’s “multicultural experiment” and the “Muslim invasion” of Norway and Europe.