Norwegian secret service insists it could not have prevented Breivik's violent spree

The Norwegian secret service is insisting there were no indicators from which they might have learned what right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik was planning before he murdered 77 people last summer. Deutsche-Presse Agentur reports that the secret service said today that while Breivik did buy his explosives in Poland, he spent too little money on them for the agency to start pursuing the case.

Representatives of the secret service insist that because Breivik planned the assassinations alone, it was almost impossible to stop him. Prior to the attack he was not known to be a right-wing extremist. The secret service is the last state institution to evaluate its role with respect to Norway’s worst massacre since the end of WWII.

Breivik has confessed to having placed the bomb that killed eight people in Oslo and then to having murdered 69 participants in a Social Democratic Youth summer camp. Last Thursday the Norwegian Police admitted for the first time that they could have intervened against Breivik more rapidly.

The trial of Breivik will start in one month and is expected to last about 10 weeks. The right-wing extremist faces 21 years in prison if convicted, but there is the possibility that the court might find him insane. Two psychiatrists came to the conclusion last fall that Breivik suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.