I feel that I have lost my soul says lawyer for Breivik

Geir Lippestad is understood to have initially refused the request to represent Breivik. He was called the day after the massacre and explosion in which 77 people died, but was convinced to take the case on by his wife.

Breivik has admitted killing eight people in a bombing in Oslo’s government district and 69 in a shooting massacre at the Labour Party’s youth camp on Utoya island outside the capital, but yesterday entered a plea of not guilty claiming the slaughter was in self-defence.

The 33-year-old has claimed he was striking against the Left-leaning political forces he blames for allowing immigration in Norway.

Mr Lippestad admitted that the case is having a serious impact on his life.

“I feel I have lost my soul in this case,” he said. “I hope to get it back once it’s over – and that it will be in the same condition as before.”

Breivik is not the lawyer’s first unpopular client, in 2002 he represented a neo-Nazi who knifed to death a mixed-race teenager in Oslo. The murder of Benjamin Hermansen – son of a black Ghanaian father and white Norwegian mother – sparked public outcry and tens of thousands of people marched against race crimes.

His decision to represent Ole Nicolai Kvisler put him in the national spotlight, and his reputation for helping brutal murderers receive a fair trial is set to be demonstrated again.

Mr Lippestad, a member of the Labour Party, whose youth camp was attacked on Utoya island, said his client had wanted to revolutionise Norway’s society and, during an earlier court hearing in July last year, had “confessed to the factual circumstances” of the atrocities but denied criminal responsibility.

The 47-year-old described Breivik as a “very cold” person who appeared to have no idea of the worldwide revulsion at his acts.

A psychiatric report presented to the Oslo district court on Tuesday backed up Breivik’s own claim that he is sane, and contradicted an earlier assessment that declared him psychotic.

Meanwhile a number of groups have been created by Norwegians on the social networking site Facebook to support Mr Lippestad’s actions.

One user described him as “doing a great job with great dignity” while another said he showed “great wisdom, respect and humility for the job and the values of a democracy”.

In the car bombing outside government buildings in Oslo, eight people were killed and 209 wounded.

Another 67 people were killed and 33 wounded – most of them teenagers – in the shooting spree at the youth camp. A further two people died by falling or drowning.

Breivik has previously said his killing spree was “a preventative attack against state traitors”, who were guilty of “ethnic cleansing” because they supported a multicultural society.

Mr Lippestad said his only regret is that “he did not go further”.

“It is difficult to understand, but I am telling you this to prepare people for his testimony,” he told reporters before the trial.

The explosion on July 22 last year left a dust-clogged square covered in twisted metal and shattered glass.

Police described it as an “Oklahoma city-type” bombing, targeting a government building, perpetrated by a home-grown assailant and using the same mix of fertiliser and fuel that blew up a building in the United States in 1995.

The bomb was packed into a truck outside the building.

An agricultural supplier said Breivik bought six tonnes of fertiliser in the weeks before the explosion.

But as police battled to deal with the effects of the bomb, a much more deadly attack was about to begin 20 miles north-west of the capital.

Breivik, dressed as a policeman, drove to a lake outside the capital and took a ferry to the island of Utoya, where hundreds of young people were attending a summer camp organised by the youth wing of the Labour Party.

At around 4.50pm he opened fire, claiming another 69 lives.

It is claimed that he beckoned to his young victims before shooting them one by one.

Survivors of the shooting spree described hiding and fleeing into the water to escape.

Police arrived on the island an hour and a half after the gunman first opened fire, because they did not have quick access to a helicopter and could not find a boat to reach the scene only several hundred yards away.

When the armed officers did locate a boat they overloaded it, causing it to breakdown.

Breivik surrendered when officers finally reached him on Utoya at 6.35pm.

Oslo police director Oeystein Maeland said later: “I regret we weren’t able to arrest the suspect earlier than we did. Could police have been faster? The answer is yes. If the boat hadn’t been over capacity, police would have been on Utoya faster.”