Anders Behring Breivik trial: we are stronger than ever, survivor tells court

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/15/anders-behring-breivik-trial-survivor

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Ina Rangønes Libak spent almost a month in hospital after Anders Behring Breivik found her hiding behind a piano in a cafe on the island of Utøya last July. He killed 13 people in that building and shot Libak at least four times – in the face, in both arms and in her left breast.

She still has the scars, she told Oslo criminal court on Tuesday, rising from her seat to show off the most visible. "I just cover them up with make-up – good make-up."

She felt sure she was going to die that day, Libak said. "I remember all the shots that hit me," said the 22-year-old during testimony that had the courtroom crying and laughing in equal measure.

"I think I was first shot in the arms and I thought, OK, I can survive this, it's OK if you're shot in the arms. Then I was shot in the jaw. I thought, OK, this is a lot more serious. Then I was shot in the chest and I thought, OK, this is going to kill me."

Somehow, she managed to run. "I started to feel that I am stumbling, falling, I don't have full control over my body and I'm thinking, OK, I'm going to die. This is how it feels to die … I couldn't stop the bleeding. I was shouting 'I've been shot, I've been shot, I'm going to die.'"

Then she remembered a friend's voice saying: "We can't leave Ina here." He carried her to shelter with others underneath a skate ramp.

What happened there, Libak said, was "just amazing". Her friends started taking off their clothes to use as tourniquets. They supported each other, she said. "Every time one person got really upset and said sorry, the other said: 'It's OK, we're going to work our way through this, we'll survive. We're going to make this.'"

She remembered crying that she was going to die, only to be reminded of another member of the AUF, the Norwegian Labour party's youth wing, which was holding its annual summer camp on Utøya on 22 July. "She was from Uganda and she survived being shot in the head, so we were saying to each other: 'We can survive, we can survive.'"

They heard the shots getting closer. Libak recalled one of the group whispering a stern order: "'We are just going to lie bloody still here' – she doesn't usually swear, so we knew it was serious."

Despite the danger, Libak's friends stayed by her side. "None of them chose to save their own lives and run. They said we are all together in this."

The group held their breath as Breivik approached, eventually coming to within two metres. "But he didn't look in our direction," Libak said. "If he had, he would have seen us. It would have been easy to spot us if he had been looking in the other direction."

It was much later, after Breivik was arrested, that Libak realised she was not his only victim. She was carried by a friend to a rescue boat, she said, "but there were so many dead people to climb over and they stumbled. It was just gruesome and then we understood the extent of what had happened."

On the boat to the mainland, Libak recalled, she told a friend not to look at her. "You'll suffer trauma later," she told the friend. "And I don't know how she found the right words, but she said: 'No, Ina, you are really, really beautiful."

It was then that she first believed she might survive. "Through this whole experience on Utøya I had a voice in my head … telling me there is no trouble dying, it's like falling asleep. But once I got there I had a hope that things were going to turn out right."

The court laughed as she remembered "something weird" she told the female head of the trauma team at the hospital. "I was telling her how great it was for equal rights and equality that she was head of the team."

Ten months on, Libak's positivity has not faltered. "We've been very good at taking care of one another and supporting each other," she said. "I've spent a lot of time in AUF and it's great to see new members and to see that the old members are committed and we are stronger than ever. We focus on the politics and this hasn't weakened us.

"At the same time it's been hard. It's been horrendous, all these fantastic strong people that we lost and that people loved so much These were people that Norway needed as well," she told the court.

Since the attacks, membership of the youth wings of Norway's major political parties has jumped – by 46% between 2010 and 2011 in the case of Labour, to 13,900, and by 59% for the Young Conservatives, to 4,422.

Libak has continued with her course in international environment and development studies, and taken all her exams. One of the prosecutors posed a question that many others in court were thinking: "You appear to be a person with a more positive attitude than average," said Svein Holden. "But it must still be very hard for you?"

Of course, said Libak. "It has. I'm not trying to hide that in any way." She was often afraid, she said, and still had nightmares.

Breivik has claimed he carried out the massacre on Utøya in order to wipe out the next generation of a political party he blamed for encouraging a multicultural Norway. But the message from many of the young people who survived his rampage is clear: you have made us stronger, not weaker.