Anders Breivik trial: young survivors give evidence

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/14/anders-breivik-trial-young-survivors

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Young people who survived Anders Behring Breivik's gun massacre on the island of Utøya have been giving evidence at his trial in Oslo.

Breivik, 33, admits carrying out the bomb and gun attacks last summer which left 77 dead – including 69 on Utøya – but is pleading not guilty on the grounds that the attacks were an act of "self preservation" carried out to protect the "indigenous" population of Norway from immigration.

Frida Holm Skoglund, 20, became the first witness in the 10-week trial to ask Breivik to leave the courtroom before she took the stand. Breivik agreed and watched proceedings via video link next door.

Wearing a headband made of daisies, Skoglund described in a quiet voice how she had been in the tent camp when she heard a series of bangs. She saw a man "dressed in police uniform" and suddenly fellow campers "scattered like birds".

The man was not a police officer. It was Breivik, halfway through the act he now describes as "brutal but necessary".

Skoglund had run some distance before she realised she had been shot.

"I touched my thigh and felt something sharp there," she said. "I pulled it out and I saw, I felt the bullet."

Another witness, Silja Kristianne Uteng, 21, also did not register she had been hit until some time after the event. She thought her arm had somehow caught a tent guy rope as she ran away from the island camp when Breivik opened fire. It was only after she swam all the way across to the mainland that she realised she too had been shot.

The survivors described their thought process as they plotted their escape. Lars Grønnestad, 20, recalled lying on the ground after one of Breivik's bullets punctured his lung. "I remember thinking I can't just lie here, I need to get away, this is too open. While I was looking for somewhere to go I was thinking who this could be? A rightwing extremist, leftwing extremist, a coup d'etat, what it could be?"

When real police officers finally reached his part of the island, Grønnestad was reluctant to call out for help. "I was a bit hesitant to tell them because it was a police officer who shot me, I thought they might come and finish what the other one started," he said.

Later, Skoglund described how Breivik had attempted to lure her to shore after she had started swimming, calling: "Come back here!" She had no intention of doing so. "It was very absurd. I didn't really understand what was going on but I would never have swum towards a person like that," she said.

She carried on swimming despite the bullet wound in her thigh, vomiting twice and suffering an asthma attack before finally being dragged aboard a rowing boat. She told the court how a friend swam with one arm out of the water, holding a mobile phone, so they could call the police. "We had to shout into the phone to say that it was no joke … We thought they weren't taking us seriously," she said, claiming the operator hung up on the girls several times.

The survivors talked about how the attacks had affected their lives.

Skoglund said it had been "up and down" and that she experienced feelings of guilt. Asked why, she said: "I was the leader of my delegation in my county and I lost the three youngest ones."

Grønnestad appeared to be coping better. "Things are going OK," he said. "I react somewhat [badly] to loud sounds but apart from that I have a full life. Perhaps I appreciate things more."

But despite her vulnerability, Skoglund ended on a defiant note. "We won. He lost. Norwegian youth can swim."