GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Police in Norway believe confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik acted alone in killing 78 people.
Norwegians are also wondering why police did not stop the killer sooner.
“Why didn’t you come earlier?,” survivors screamed when Norwegian police arrived after an hour in which Breivik had shot dead 68 people, most of them teenagers. Norwegian police announced Monday 25 July that they had overcounted the number of people slain at the island retreat and were lowering the confirmed death toll from 86 to 68.
Breivik, who jeered on his way to court, entered a not-guilty plea, saying he wanted to save Europe from Muslim immigration.
Further details: Norway News, The Foreigner
French control of Cote d’Ivoire city’s airport said to ensure safety of foreigners
Radio France International reports early 4 April that French troops have taken control of the international airport in Abidjan, as fierce fighting for the city continues. The French have also reportedly increased their peacekeeping mission force from 300 to 1,400 and are stepping up pressure on former president Laurent Gbagbo to admit he lost the 2010 election and leave office
Food and water supplies in the city are starting to run short, with deliveries difficult, report Bloomberg and Reuters news agencies.
Eight hundred people were massacred in the city of Duekoue in the west of the country last week, aid agencies have reported, but it is still unclear who was responsible, amid accusations that it may have been troops loyal to the UN-supported president-elect, Alassane Ouattara, while others blame Gbagbo supporters.
The Russian State Archives is publishing documents 28 April, for the first time, with leader Joseph Stalin’s orders in 1943 to kill 22,000 Polish officers in Katyn by shooting them. The Katyn massacres have long been a source of major tension between the two countries and more than 100 documents that Poland would like made public are still secret, but the unprecedented step appears to be a sign of warming relations between Russia and Poland. A group in Russia, Memorial, has been fighting a lengthy legal battle to declassify the documents.
Links to other sites: Moscow Times, Times, UK
Andal Ampatuan Jr, the mayor of Datu Unsayalso, who is also the son of a provincial governor on the Philippines island of Maguindanao, has been charged with multiple murders in connection with the cold-blooded massacre of 57 unarmed civilians by a large group of armed men Monday 24 November. The massacre has sent shock waves through the Philippines, with the president’s office saying she is enraged at what is a “limited clan political rivalry.” The area has been subject to violence in the past linked to Muslim secessionist groups, but President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s spokesperson says the massacre is not linked to those groups.
