Norway killer 'would have done it again'

By KARL RITTER, Associated Press

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik defended his massacre of 77 people, insisting Tuesday he would do it all again and calling his rampage the most "spectacular" attack by a nationalist militant since World War II.

Reading a prepared statement in court, the anti-Muslim extremist lashed out at Norwegian and European governments for embracing immigration and multiculturalism.

He claimed to be speaking as a commander of an "anti-communist" resistance movement and an anti-Islam militant group he called the Knights Templar. Prosecutors have said the group does not exist.

Maintaining he acted out of "goodness, not evil" to prevent a wider civil war, Breivik vowed, "I would have done it again."

Breivik has five days to explain why he set off a bomb in Oslo's government district on July 22, killing eight people, and then gunned down 69 others at a Labor Party youth camp outside the Norwegian capital. He denies criminal guilt, saying he was acting in self-defense.

"The attacks on July 22 were a preventive strike. I acted in self-defense on behalf of my people, my city, my country," he said as he finished his statement, in essence a summary of the 1,500-page manifesto he posted online before the attacks. "I therefore demand to be found innocent of the present charges."

Breivik's testimony was delayed after one of the five judges hearing the case was dismissed for his comments online the day after the attack that said Breivik deserves the death penalty. Lawyers on all sides had requested that lay judge Thomas Indreboe be taken off the trial, saying theide whether to send him to prison or compulsory psychiatric care.

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Associated Press writers Bjoern H. Amland and Julia Gronnevet in Oslo and Malin Rising in Stockholm contributed to this report.