Panel Faults Police Response To Norway Massacre

Anders Behring Breivik. CC_Flickr: Oslo politidistrikt

An independent inquest into the mass killings in Norway last summer by a fanatical anti-Muslim extremist sharply rebuked the country's police and intelligence services Monday, saying they could have averted or at least disrupted his plot to bomb downtown Oslo and shoot unarmed people unimpeded at a summer youth camp.

The inquest by the panel, the July 22 Commission, named after the date of the massacre, said the police had failed in their duty to protect the camp on Utoya Island where 69 people, most of them teenagers, were killed by the extremist, Anders Behring Breivik. The inquest also faulted the police in Oslo, where hours earlier Mr. Breivik had parked a van packed with explosives that killed eight people. He was seen in a getaway car, which he drove to the island, but police officers failed to share a description of the vehicle.

Read the full New York Times story.