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Norway no better prepared for attack than in 2011 mass murder: auditor general

Xinhua, May 22, 2015 Adjust font size:

Norway is no better prepared for a disaster or terror strike than at the time of the mass murder by Anders Behring Breivik in 2011, the country's Auditor General Per-Kristian Foss said on Thursday.

According to Foss, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security had failed to enact most of the most important recommendations of the commission which was set up to analyse why Norway response to Breivik's attacks had been so inadequate, digital news publisher The Local reported.

"Since the Gjorv Commission presented its proposals for improvement... we have seen no significant improvement in the ability of the ministry," Foss said when he released a report on the government's public safety and emergency preparedness.

The fact-finding commission led by lawyer Alexandra Bech Gjorv made an assessment both of the security services' failure to uncover Breivik's plans before his attack and of the police and emergency services' response to it once it happened.

The Gjorv Report concluded that the attack on the government quarter could have been prevented if the official safeguards had actually been implemented and police could have arrived on Utoya Island sooner and caught Breivik faster.

However, little had been done over the past four years to improve the situation, Foss said, adding that the Ministry of Justice and Public Security had recently begun enacting some of the long-delayed measures, but this had only begun to happen after he began preparing his report.

Breivik, a 33-year-old Norwegian on a mission to expel Muslims from Europe, set off a car bomb that killed eight people outside government headquarters in Oslo on July 22, 2011 and then killed 69 others in a shooting rampage on Utoya Island, where young members of the governing Labor Party had gathered for their annual summer camp.

In 2012, Breivik was sentenced to 21 years in prison at the Oslo District Court.

Norway's penal code does not have the death penalty or life in prison, and the maximum prison term for Breivik's charges is 21 years. However, inmates who are considered a threat to society can be held indefinitely. Endit