World in View

by Gerry Emmett

Breivik whitewash?

Norway may not try Anders Behring Breivik for murdering 69 young people on Utoya Island last July 22. He was first declared psychotic and unfit to stand trial. After wide public outrage, the government has agreed to seek a second opinion. A no-trial decision would deny a reckoning with Breivik’s motives and the ideology that inspired his massacre.

Norwegian police have confirmed that Breivik was in Liberia, Africa, in 2002 at the time he claimed to be meeting there with his true role models, Serb war criminals. He wrote in his book: “I had the privilege of meeting one of the greatest living war heroes of Europe at the time, a Serbian crusader and war hero who had killed many Muslims in battle.”

At the time Serbs were supplying weapons to the regime of Charles Taylor, warlord-president and protégé of Muammar Qaddafi, and ally of U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson, who diverted Christian “relief” money from Rwanda to finance Taylor’s blood diamond mines. Taylor was removed from office under pressure from various insurgents and today resides in the Hague where he is being tried for crimes against humanity.

A Breivik whitewash would show how far some in Europe are from coming to terms with its own war criminals. He dreamed of continuing the work of monsters like Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic in the mass murder of Muslims and their “sympathizers.” He envisioned millions dead. He was not any more insane than those war criminals, or current hate-mongers like Robert Spencer.

2012 is the 20th anniversary of the start of the Bosnian genocide. We have not forgotten.