Latest news with #Breivik
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Yahoo
Neo-Nazi leader accused of inspiring school shooting, plotting NYC attack extradited to US
Federal officials extradited an international neo-Nazi group leader they say inspired a teen to commit a school shooting in Tennessee earlier this year and plotted to commit a mass casualty attack in New York City targeting Jewish people. The terrorist group's leader, 21-year-old Michail Chkhikvishvili, orchestrated deadly attacks around the globe, prosecutors said. The citizen of the nation of Georgia was extradited from Moldova on May 22 after he was arrested in July. He was scheduled to be arraigned in Brooklyn on May 23, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ said the man, who went by the name "Commander Butcher," was the leader of the Maniac Murder Cult, which goes by several other names including MKY. Chkhikvishvili has distributed a writing called the "Hater's Handbook," encouraging people to commit acts of mass violence and "ethnic cleansing," according to court filings. His "solicitations of violence" led to international attacks, including a 2024 stabbing outside a mosque in Turkey, prosecutors said. Chkhikvishvili targeted the U.S. as a site for more attacks because of the ease of accessing firearms, prosecutors said in court records. He told an undercover law enforcement employee, 'I see USA as big potential because accessibility to firearms and other resources,' in an electronic message sent Sept. 8, 2023, court filings show. It was not clear if Chkhikvishvili had an attorney who could speak on his behalf Chkhikvishvili has been indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on four counts including solicitation of violent felonies. The charges stemmed from Chkhikvishvili's communications with an undercover FBI employee in which he trained and encouraged the undercover agent to carry out a mass attack against Jewish people and minorities. Chkhikvishvili corresponded with the undercover agent between September 2023 and at least March 2024. The plot included having an individual wearing a Santa Claus costume hand out poisoned candies to Jewish kids in New York City on New Year's Eve. It later evolved into targeting Jewish people on a larger scale. Chkhikvishvili said he wanted the attack to be a "bigger action than Breivik," prosecutors said. Breivik refers to Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a massacre in Norway in 2011 that targeted mostly teenagers at a camp. "His goal was to spread hatred, fear, and destruction by encouraging bombings, arson, and even poisoning children," U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said last year. The MKY group is based in Russia and Ukraine but has members around the world, including the U.S., according to a federal complaint. Members adhere to neo-Nazi ideology promoting violence against racial minorities. The man's arrest came before the deadly attack at Antioch High School on Jan. 22, 2025. However, prosecutors in the New York federal court linked the Antioch shooting to Chkhikvishvili's solicitations of violence in a court filing on May 23, the Nashville Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. Prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York wrote to the judge requesting the man be incarcerated before trial. They pointed to several ways his actions have 'directly resulted in real violence,' including the shooting at Antioch High School. According to the prosecutors, the 17-year-old attacker claimed he was taking action on behalf of MKY and at least one other group in an audio recording posted online before the shooting. It is not clear if the shooter was a member of MKY or had contact with Chkhikvishvili or other members of the terrorist organization. Chkhikvishvili said the group asks for video of brutal beatings, arson, explosions or murders to join the group, adding that the victims should be 'low race targets.' Chkhikvishvili's name also appeared in the document the DOJ said was written by the Antioch shooter – a 300-page writing in which the shooter espoused misanthropic White supremacist and Nazi ideologies. The shooter also referred to the founder of MKY and said he would write the founder's name on his gun, according to prosecutors. Josselin Corea Escalante, 16, died after the 17-year-old shot her with a pistol in the cafeteria of Antioch High School. Another student was injured during the attack. The shooter, 17-year-old student Solomon Henderson, then shot and killed himself. Contributing: Michael Loria, USA TODAY This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Neo-Nazi leader who inspired school shooting extradited to US
The Guardian
13-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘That serene Scandinavian facade, yet there's terror underneath': artist unveils design for Norwegian national memorial to 22 July attacks
Fourteen years ago, the heart of Oslo was reconfigured by hate. On 22 July 2011, Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik detonated a car bomb outside the office of the then prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, killing eight people and damaging surrounding buildings, before murdering a further 69 people on the nearby island of Utøya. But now the same site is to be reconfigured by hope. Last week, after a multi-round, three-year-long selection process, a jury of curators, politicians, artists and representatives of the victims and survivors of the attacks announced the winning design for a new Norwegian national memorial to be unveiled in time for the 15th anniversary in 2026. Norwegian artist Matias Faldbakken's mosaic Upholding, 12 metres high and 15 metres wide, and made of some 500,000 stones, shows a wading bird native to Utøya reflected in the lake. It is a monumental piece that touches on both societal support and nature. And a mosaic, Faldbakken argues, is the perfect symbol for a memorial site. 'A fragmented image, every part plays its role. In old literature, it's called painting for eternity. A mosaic is one of the only image formats that survives fire, earthquakes and floods.' The mosaic will be braced by a steel rig similar to the one that once secured Pablo Picasso's mural The Fishermen on one of the blast-damaged blocks in the quarter. Faldbakken, who represented Norway at the Venice Biennale in 2005, explains that he was initially inspired by walking past the rig holding Picasso's work, which stood in the Government Quarter for almost three years. But the main purpose of the monument is not to reference the work of another artist but to serve as 'a window to the other crime site', explains Faldbakken. After triggering the Oslo blast, Breivik travelled to the island of Utøya in Tyrifjorden, a lake 40km northwest of Olso, where he attacked a summer camp for the Labour party's youth wing (AUF). Most of the 69 victims were teenagers. 'I was out on the island many times,' Faldbakken says. 'I started to research the birds. And this small wader had a lot of physical traits that I thought worked: a very small, fragile and light bird with its thin legs. But it has this angle to it. It has a gaze. It pushes you a little bit back.' On Faldbakken's last visit to Utøya, the lake was completely still, the water a mirror, which inspired the bird's reflection in the design. It is not meant as a clear symbol of life and death. 'This is a very peaceful image but it is almost like a Rorschach test. It has this duality,' he notes. 'Breivik was a homegrown terrorist, which mystified this country at the time. There's that serene Scandinavian facade, and yet there's the terror underneath.' Survivors and the relatives of those killed will be involved in placing the stones into the composition. The names of the 77 people who died will be engraved on the base of the work. Regitze Schäffer Botnen, who was a 17-year-old participant at the Utøya camp on 22 July, was a member of the jury. Initially she felt that she was representing all the survivors, 'And then I realised that is an impossible task. So, I figured out that I had to dig deeper into the subject and listen to other survivors and people who lost their children, and ask the question not what do you like the most but what is a good memorial? To see what kind of conversation that started, and learn from it.' The transparency and public engagement in the selection process was in part a result of the backlash against a rushed commission for a memorial on Utøya island in 2014. The chosen work, Jonas Dahlberg's Memory Wound, proposed a permanent three-and-a-half metre gap be cut through the island. The concept was considered by many as memorialising one act of violence with another, and the project was subsequently dropped. 'It didn't have the grounding of what we're doing now,' Faldbakken says, tactfully. 'And it was very much in the backyard of many people who lived close to Utøya, and were the people who took out their boats and saved the kids.' In 2012, Breivik received a 21-year-sentence, the longest that can be handed down in Norway. 'He might theoretically walk past the memorial a free man some time in the future, but it is highly unlikely,' says Thomas Ugelvik, a professor of law at Oslo University. Breivik received a forvaring sentence, which is indeterminate. If he still poses a threat to society the sentence can be extended, potentially for the rest of his life. Arguably, the greatest memorial to 22 July would be the impossibility of such an attack happening again. 'We have a greater focus on emergency preparedness than we did before the attack, as well as many safety measures around governmental buildings and critical infrastructure,' says Jens Stoltenberg, who went on to become general secretary of Nato and is now finance minister of Norway. 'But no measure can serve as a guarantee against terrorism or extremism. In that sense a memorial is important as a constant reminder of something we would never want to experience again, and that our free and open society can never be taken for granted.' In the wake of 22 July, led by a public address from Stoltenberg, Norwegians came together. Thousands of people participated in a 'rose march' the following week, walking from the town hall to Oslo Cathedral holding roses in defiance of extremism. Faldbakken was in the US at the time of the attacks, but two of his children were in Oslo. 'It had an echo in our family life, because the kids were really shocked by it. I jumped on the first plane and came back.' Having to take so many peoples' views and feelings into account while designing the memorial was a very different practice for Faldbakken. 'I stood on the side as an artist and thought I'd make the best work I can based on this idea. Pretty early on I took myself and my artist's ego out of the equation. It was not about me any more; it was about them.'
Arab News
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Norwegian mass murderer Breivik loses prison condition case
'The Court of Appeal considers that the restrictions are sufficiently justified,' the three judges said in their rulingThey also said that the prison authorities have put in place sufficient measures to compensate for his relative isolation in prisonOSLO: A Norwegian court on Wednesday rejected an appeal brought by right-wing extremist and mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, who claims his prison conditions are a violation of human who killed 77 people in July 2011, has regularly complained about his prison conditions, despite them including three private cells, two Guinea pigs, a flat-screen television and a video game that he has been 'treated like an animal,' Breivik has sued the Norwegian state on several occasions in a bid to get improvements to compensate for his relative has argued that this isolation constitutes a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which prohibits 'inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.'His case was struck down by a district court in February, after which he appealed.'The Court of Appeal considers that the restrictions are sufficiently justified by the risk of violence that persists,' the three judges said in their ruling also said that the prison authorities have put in place sufficient measures to compensate for his relative isolation in court also dismissed Breivik's appeal for an easing of the filtering of his mail, for which he also invoked the ECHR on the right to July 22, 2011, Breivik set off a bomb near government offices in Oslo, killing eight people, before gunning down 69 others, mostly teens, at a Labour Party youth wing summer camp on the island of said he had killed his victims because they embraced was sentenced in 2012 to 21 years in prison, which can be extended as long as he is considered a threat.A Norwegian court on Wednesday rejected an appeal brought by right-wing extremist and mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, who claims his prison conditions are a violation of human rights. (Reuters/File)
