Victim's family member hurls shoe at Breivik at Norway trial

OSLO - Agence France-Presse

REUTERS Photo

A family member of one of Anders Behring Breivik's 69 victims in his shooting massacre on Norway's Utoeya island last July threw a shoe at him in court today, screaming "you killer, go to Hell!" The shoe hit Breivik's lawyer and the incident, followed by applause, "bravos" and tears among onlookers in the courtroom, led to a temporary suspension of proceedings on the 17th day of the trial.
 
The attacker, a man of Iraqi origin whose brother was one of the 69 people Breivik killed on July 22, was quickly brought under control by security guards and escorted out of the courtroom as he continued to shout in English: "Go to Hell!" The shoe attack was the first serious incident since the beginning of the 33-year-old right-wing extremist's trial on April 16.
 
Breivik has been charged with committing terrorist acts when he on July 22 first bombed a government building in Oslo, killing eight people, before going on his shooting rampage on Utoeya, where the ruling Labour Party's youth wing was hosting a summer camp.
 
He has confessed to the acts he has refused to plead guilty, insisting his massacres were "cruel but necessary" to stop the Labour Party's "multicultural experiment" and the "Muslim invasion" of Norway and Europe.
 
The black shoe did not hit Breivik but did hit one of his lawyers, Vibeke Hein Baera, who sits between the accused and the onlookers.
 
"Luckily, it was just a shoe," Hein Baera told AFP after the incident.