Norway holds first funerals for massacre victims
Updated: 2011-07-29 20:28
(Agencies)
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| A casket with a picture of Bano Rashid is pictured during her funeral at Nesodden church near Oslo July 29, 2011. Rashid, aged 18 and who came to Norway in 1996 with her family fleeing Iraq, is one of the victims of Anders Behring Breivik's massacre of 76 people a week ago. She will be buried at the church in the first funeral. It will combine Muslim and Christian prayers as the nation tries to come to terms with the trauma. Norway will hold the first funerals on Friday for victims of Breivik's massacre amid signs of a leap in popularity for the ruling Labour Party that was his main target. Flags around the nation flew at half mast to mark a day of memorial one week after Breivik, an anti-Islam zealot, set off a bomb in central Oslo that killed 8 people. He then shot 68 people at a summer camp for youths of the ruling Labour Party.[Photo/Agencies] |
OSLO, Norway? — Norwegians began a solemn day of memorials on Friday for victims of last week's bomb and shooting massacre, and the first funerals for the 76 victims were being held.
"Today it is one week since Norway was hit by evil," Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said at a memorial service in the "People's House" assembly hall.
"We have to live with July 22, but together we will make it," he said from a stage adorned with red roses, the symbol of his governing Labor Party.
In his speech, Labor Party youth-wing leader Eskil Pedersen said the gunman attacked Norway's core values, such as democracy, tolerance and fighting racism.
"Long before he stands before a court we can say: he has lost," Pedersen said. He vowed that the youth organization would return to Utoya island — where the shootings occurred — next year for its annual summer gathering, a tradition that stretches back decades.
Another memorial service was being held at a mosque in an immigrant district of Oslo. The confessed attacker, a vehement anti-Muslim, was to undergo his second round of questioning by police on Friday.
Stoltenberg has urged his increasingly diverse Nordic nation to show unity at the services in the face of its deadliest assault during peacetime in a bombing in Oslo and a shooting rampage at a youth camp on Utoya.
Norwegian news agency NTB said suspect Anders Behring Breivik was picked up at a jail Friday and transported to police headquarters in Oslo for a session of questioning.
Investigators believe the 32-year-old Norwegian acted alone, after years of meticulous planning, and haven't found anything to support his claims that he's part of an anti-Muslim militant network plotting a series of coups d'etat across Europe.
Breivik was questioned for seven hours Saturday, the day after the twin attacks targeting the government district of Oslo and a youth camp of the prime minister's left-leaning Labor Party on the island northwest of the capital.
He admitted to carrying out the attacks but has pleaded not guilty to terror charges, saying he's in a state of war, according to his lawyer and police.
Police have charged Breivik with terrorism, which carries a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison. However, it's possible the charge will change during the investigation to crimes against humanity, which carries a 30-year prison term, Norway's top prosecutor Tor-Aksel Busch told The Associated Press.
"Such charges will be considered when the entire police investigation has been finalized," he said. "It is an extensive investigation. We will charge Breivik for each individual killing."
A formal indictment isn't expected until next year, Busch said.