On the afternoon of July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik carried out the worst terror attack in Norway’s history, detonating a bomb in Oslo before gunning down scores of civilians at a youth event nearby. The victims were young as 14.
It was a quiet Friday in the capital when Breivik began his rampage, allegedly in desperate bid to publicise his 1,500-page far-right manifesto.
The attack had been nine years in the making. At 3.25pm, a bomb exploded outside the prime minister’s office. Eight people died in the explosion as Breivik headed for a small island where he killed a further 69, mostly teenagers.
Hundreds of young people, including Bjørn Ihler, now 33, had travelled to Utøya in Tyrifjorden lake for the annual AUF summer camp, an event organised by the ruling centre-Left Labour party.
Armed with semi-automatic rifle and a Glock pistol, Breivik arrived disguised as a policeman, claiming to be checking in after the blast across the water.
Chaos broke out as Breivik began moving around the island, coldly shooting his victims as they pretended to be dead.
With nowhere to hide and no way off the island, panic erupted as Breivik stalked his targets, reportedly shouting: ‘You are going to die today, Marxists.’
Among the survivors was Norwegian activist Bjørn, who was on holiday in Norway as a student at the time. Thirteen years on from the attacks, he bravely recounted his lucky escape as he sheltered two young children in an icy lake as they desperately held out for the police to arrive.
Anders Behring Breivik has his handcuffs removed after entering the courtroom in Skien, Norway, on Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Bjørn spoke candidly about his traumatic experience in July 2011, surviving Anders Breivik
Bjorn after the attack with the two boys he saved
Breivik drove to the island of Utøya, where he opened fire on the annual summer camp of the left-wing Labour Party’s youth wing. Sixty-nine people there were killed
Bjørn – now peace activist and expert on countering violent extremism – was around 21 years old and on holiday in Norway at the time, taking a break from his first year of university studying film production in Liverpool.
His father had suggested the camp as a way to connect with people. It was a popular event, with some 500 to 700 attendees from all across the country.
Bjørn had decided to skip work on the Friday to visit the island and watch as guest speakers rallied crowds and held workshops. Children as young as 14 were attending to socialise, camp and engage in political debate.
But in an instant, everything changed. Bjørn told XXX that news of the car bomb in Oslo reached the island soon after. They were told the island was the safest place to stay.
‘Then we started hearing loud popping sounds,’ he said. ‘The first assumption was someone’s firing off fireworks who haven’t realised what’s going on in Oslo.
‘Then in the distance from where I was on the campsite we saw a man in dark clothes, which turned out later a fake police uniform, was walking across the ridge and some people ran towards him.’
The man was Anders Breivik.
Breivik had dressed as a police officer while in Oslo, planting a 950kg bomb in a van outside (PM and later NATO chief) Jens Stoltenberg’s office.
He left, and the bomb detonated nine minutes later, destroying the facade of the building and damaging several others. Eight died in the bombing.
As Oslo scrambled to respond to the terror, Breivik drove out of the capital and took a ferry to the island. Once there, he began shooting, killing 69 people and injuring 32 in little more than an hour.
Bjørn meanwhile called his father to try and find out what was going on. He was advised to stay put and stay hidden. It was a tiny island, taking perhaps 10 minutes to cover on foot.
Breivik was sentenced to 21 years in jail, the harshest penalty possible under Norwegian law, for killing 77 people in a bomb and gun attack in July 2011. Pictured: The victims of the attack
What the police believe is gunman Anders Behring Breivik walking with a gun in hand among bodies on Utoeya island July 22, 2011 (Handout already pictured)
It was July 22, 2011, when, after months of meticulous preparations, Breivik set off a car bomb outside the government headquarters in Oslo, killing eight people and wounding dozens
Others, he said, still did not understand what was happening. He told them to be quiet, to cover up brightly coloured clothing and hide. Bjørn hid with an eight-year-old boy whose father was among the security personnel – and one of the first to be shot.
‘We found a hiding spot not so far away from the track and we laid down on the ground there and stayed hidden while consistently hearing gunshots around us.
‘There was a lot of echo and so it was difficult to place where the shots were coming from.
‘We stayed there for almost an hour I believe while this was happening. After a while, the shots came closer to where we were and a group of people came running through the bush where we were hiding so we joined that group believing that they were running from Breivik.’
‘We ended up running into a place where we couldn’t follow the track anymore because there were so many dead bodies on it. Somehow we ended up on the southern tip of the island, where some rocks are going out into the water. We saw some people were swimming.’
The children could not swim, so they stayed. Hopes of escape were dashed when approaching boats and a helicopter turned out to be a broadcasting company, not police.
And then, Breivik found them.
‘This man in a police uniform came out of the forest behind us and told us they caught the bad guy,’ Bjørn recalled, still on the phone to his father at the time.
The man in uniform ‘lifted his gun and started shooting at our group.
‘I jumped in the water, so the last thing my father heard is that I’m safe and the police was here as my phone died.’
Bomb and terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik (red top) leaves the courthouse in a police car in Oslo on July 25, 2011, after the hearing to decide his further detention
People gathering around a makeshift memorial outside the Domkirken church in Oslo, during commemorations for the victims of the July 22, 2011 attacks, on July 25, 2011
Covered corpses are seen on the shore of the small, wooded island of Utoeya, after mass killer Anders Behring Breivik killed 69 people
Bjørn and the children swam out away from the shore and crawled along the shallow seabed as others were gunned down around them.
‘After doing that I looked back towards land and saw Breivik take aim at me and realised that this is the end. That was a very surreal moment.
‘Breivik fired, he missed, terrible shot, thankfully, and I ended up falling over in the water.’
Bjørn carried on moving until he reached some bushes poking out into the water. He and two young boys hid as Breivik walked back to shore, where he was eventually arrested.
‘We stayed in the water for quite a bit until the kids basically turned blue and we hadn’t heard shots for quite some time,’ Bjørn said.
‘After a while the actual police came and they had a bit of a hard time getting us to trust that they were the actual police.
‘We were kind of exhausted at that point and ended up eventually getting a boat back over to the mainland from the island.’
Breivik was ultimately sentenced in 2012 to 21 years in prison, Norway’s harshest sentence at the time. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, arguing he rejected the legitimacy of the court, but did not appeal the decision.
The sentence can be extended if still considered a threat – an argument state prosecutors have tried to made in the years since.
Bjørn is among the few survivors still reeling from the attack.
He said understanding Breivik, attending court hearings and reading his far-right manifesto, has helped make sense of the trauma, but the memory will never go away.
‘I don’t think I’ll be able to forget it, ever. It took a long time to get back to some degree of normalcy, years even. I’m dealing with post traumatic stress disorder.’
Anders Behring Breivik (R) is seen next to attorney Marte Lindholm during the first day of his trial over his prison conditions, on January 8, 2024
A similar bathroom and toilet of the sleeping cell on the second of two floors where Anders Behring Breivik serves his custodial sentence in the Ringerike prison, on December 14, 2023
A similar sleeping cell on the second of two floors where Anders Behring Breivik serves his custodial sentence in the Ringerike prison is pictured
Bjørn said he has dedicated the last 12 years of his life to researching extremism and terrorism, and creating prevention and rehabilitation programmes for radicalised people.
Breivik had published his manifesto on the day of the attacks and hoped to gain publicity for the ideas through his rampage.
The rambling tirade of Islamophobic and misogynistic ideas within called for all Muslims to be deported from Europe, attacked what he called Marxism and multi-culturalism, and urged a nationalistic call-to-arms.
Breivik believed himself to be a ‘resistance’ leader of the Knights Templar – a military order active during the Crusades – and used the manifesto to document how he had raised funds, bought weapons and prepared himself in the lead up to the attack.
The first entry was dated April/May 2002, nine years before the attack.
In the years since, survivors of the attack have learned to cope with their experience, speaking candidly on their pained memories of July 22, 2011.
Bjørn told the BBC in 2016 that in spite of his own suffering, Breivik still deserved to be treated ‘with the same respect for human right as any other inmate in our prisons’ – a brave effort towards understanding, decency and humanity in the face of terror.
As a court ruled that Breivik deserved better treatment inside and dwelled on his continued solitary confinement, Bjørn said it ‘shows great strength that we are able to take Breivik’s grievances seriously’.
‘We can see his grievances separately from his acts. We can say that everyone is equal before the law in Norway, including Breivik.’
‘But if we deny Breivik human rights simply because he denied us human rights, we are following his path and we’re sinking down to his level.
‘That’s not something I’m willing to do, and isn’t something I’m willing to let Norway do.’
Seventy-seven people were denied the opportunity to afford their attacker that privilege, many talented young children with a life ahead of them.
Anders Behring Breivik sits in the makeshift courtroom in Skien prison on the second day of his hearing where he is requesting release on parole, in Skien, Norway, January 19, 2022
Jens Stoltenberg (pictured November 6, 2024) was targeted in the 2011 attack
Floral tributes lay outside Oslo Cathedral, on the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attack by Anders Breivik, in Oslo, Thursday, July 22, 2021
Many in Norway still live with the pain of the memory, some refusing even to say his name – only referring to him as ‘The Terrorist’.
For Bjørn, the challenge is to rise above and overcome the ‘message of hate’ – a complex journey of trying to better understand the motives of his attacker, and looking inwards to heal himself and help others.
‘I don’t know if you ever truly recover from PTSD,’ he admitted in the recent interview.
‘You’ll learn to live with it in different ways. I still have a very active relationship with it but I don’t have kind of these severe symptoms of PTSD that I had initially.
‘It’s a healing process and I assume I will be on the journey of healing for the rest of my life.
‘But at this point I’m able to live a very normal life without the trauma symptoms being ever-present.’
