NORWAY: Outrage as Anders Breivik items go on display in Norway museum

Anders Breivik, the Norweigian gunman who killed 77 people in a bomb and shooting rampage  Photo: AP/Berit Roald

The fake police ID and remains of the car bomb used by Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik in his 2011 massacre are to go on display this month in a temporary exhibition in the government tower hit in the twin attack.

The far-Right extremist used the ID to convince staff running a Labour party youth camp on the island of Utøya that he had come to help them. Minutes later he shot them dead at point blank range.

“Together with his fake ID, we also show some of these fake police badges,” said Tor Einar Fagerland, the history professor who has curating the exhibition.

“It’s physical and concrete evidence. We are not putting it on display in order to dramatise the events, but just to show that it actually happened.”

The information centre on the July 22 attacks will also exhibit the engine block, tyres, and parts of the bodywork from the car bomb the killer detonated under the tower, which then housed the offices of Norway's prime minister. 

“Knowledge is our most important weapon in the fight against violence, hatred and extremism,” Norway’s minister of Local Government Jan Tore Sanner told Norway’s Aftenposten newspaper. “That’s why we want to show exactly what happened and omit no part of the story.”

John Elden, the lawyer who represented 115 relatives and survivors at Breivik's trial, was sharply critical of the decision to create a Breivik museum, arguing that the Ground Zero museum in New York did not "go so far as to exhibit Bin Laden's possessions." 

Breivik began his attack by detonating a home-made bomb, made from fertiliser and fuel oil, killing eight people and injured at least 209 more.

He then drove to Utøya where he unleashed a massacre that left 69 people dead and 110 injured. 

relatives of one of the victims

Mr Fagerland, who works as assistant professor of history at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, said that Norway’s government felt that it was now time to revisit the atrocity.

“This is still an extraordinary event that we talked about a lot in the first year, but then became quite silent. We were exhausted,” he said. “Now four years later, we think it’s important that we as a community and a democracy discuss what it means to us today and will mean tomorrow.”

The exhibition will open on July 22, the fourth anniversary of the attacks, and will remain open for at least the next five years, after which the tower block will be closed for renovation.

As well as being open to the general public, the exhibition will be used to educate school children.

The Pelican-branded case Breivik used to carry spare ammunition and smoke grenades onto the island is also on display, as are as yet unpublished photographs of the mayhem in the tower minutes after the blast went off, taken by an amateur photographer who worked in security at the site.

Mr Tanner conceded that visiting the centre would be painful for many.

“For anyone who lived through July 22, the events are an open wound that still hurt, but we must pass this painful part of our recent history in an honest way. The centre shows what actually happened.”

Breivik was sentenced to 21 years in prison in 2012.

Source: Telegraph