Norway’s Prime Minister Says Attacks Will Not Curtail Tolerance

Norwegian prison where confessed spree killer Anders Behring Breivik could spend the rest of his life has been cast as more of a comfortable retreat facility than an institution protecting the public from dangerous criminals.

Breivik is being held in isolation as he awaits trial for killing at least 76 people in a coordinated attack on the Scandinavian country's government Friday. He has confessed to going on a killing spree a governing Labor Party island camp, gunning down at least 68 people, and detonating a bomb at government headquarters in the capital, killing at least eight more.

The British newspaper The Telegraph focused on Norway's 1-year-old Halden Fengsel prison as a possible place where Breivik could serve his likely sentence. With a flatscreen television for every cell, cooking classes in its "kitchen laboratory" and female prison staff to create a less aggressive atmosphere, Halden was intended to have its inmates re-enter society better than when they left it to serve time. That approach to its prison system has given Norway a 20 percent recidivism rate.

But the man behind the worst attack on Norway since World War II might never re-enter society. While the country limits prison sentences to a maximum of 21 years, Breivik can continue to be incarcerated after his sentence if he's still considered to be too dangerous.

At a news conference in Oslo, the prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, said he had cried over the bombing attack in Oslo and the shooting attack on the island of Utoya, the site of a political retreat for young members of his governing Labor Party. The authorities in Denmark confirmed that one of the shooting victims was a 43-year-old Danish woman, the first confirmed foreign death in the killings, The Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a self-declared warrior for Christian values, has admitted responsibility but not “guilt” for the attacks. He left a 1,500-page manifesto that examined a series of lethal options to battle Muslims and “traitors.” His lawyer said Mr. Breivik believed he would die fighting his war against the threat he saw from Islam. Psychiatrists have yet to evaluate Mr. Breivik, but the police said they were holding him in isolation under a suicide watch.

Mr. Stoltenberg, asked whether Norway’s societal tolerance had allowed Mr. Breivik to pursue his radicalism unnoticed, said extremist views could be allowed but not violence. “We have to tolerate also views we don’t like,” he said. Later, he said that no one should confuse openness with naiveté. “We have been aware of the danger for violent attacks in Norway,” he said.

He said that Norwegians would “defend themselves against violence by showing that they are not afraid” and said it was “very important” for his party to return to Utoya. He himself had attended the annual political retreats every summer since 1974, he said.

Norwegians have given themselves over to an extraordinary outpouring of grief since the attacks. More than 200,000 people attended a commemoration in Oslo on Monday evening — a number equal to a third of the population of the city proper. The enormous blanket of flowers and candles in front of the Oslo Cathedral is still growing.