Norwegian Mass Murderer Linked to the English Defence League
Monday, 25 July 2011
The mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, claims to have been recruited by the EDL, and to have had over 600 EDL members as friends on Facebook.
Prior to this attack, he published a 1500 page manifesto in English, which he signed and the dated, "London 2011". He claims to have been recruited by two members of the EDL in April 2002, although UK police claim that his links seem to have been in the past and the EDL deny any association.
Prime Minister David Cameron said he took these claims, "extremely seriously".
The Met Police have been asked to help investigate Eurpean-wide far right links to Anders Behring Breivik who massacred 93 people in a bomb attack and shooting spree in Norway.
The Metropolitan Police will supply specialist officers to join a new European task force to investige European-wide far right links to the massacre. The force will be run by Europol based in The Hague.
Rob Wainwright, Europol's director of operations said: "As soon as it happened we opened our operational centre to connect the investigation with an international platform of counter terrorism analysts."
"It has taken a lot of people by surprise. We've been monitoring the right-wing extremists in Europe for many years.
"There is an active scene but until now there has been a fairly low intensity level of violence."
There have been five attacks in the last four years across Europe but only one arrest of a far right extremist had been made in 2010. In contrast 180 arrests of suspected Muslim extremists have been made, half of, Mr Wainwright claimed, had been planning attacks.
Mr Wainwright denied that the far right had been ignored due to a focus on Islamic militants, "The threat of jihadi terrorism is still out there. It is still a real and substantial threat, but of course at the same time we have to monitor other possible terrorist activities.
"Even early this year Europol issued a report warning about some emerging signs that this community was becoming more professional in its work.
"This was mainly on the internet where they were trying to mobilise a greater community, particularly youngsters using the internet in a more tech savvy way."
In the UK, chain emails, originated from the far right, making false claims about social benefits given to 'illegal' immigrants, are in circulation. People innocently forward them to their friends, assuming that they are legitimate, which perpetuates their perverse claims and stirs up racial hatred.
UPDATE (26/7/2011):
Evidence of emails between the killer and EDF activists has been reported in the press.
