Why anders breivik trial seems strange

The trial of Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik for the murder of 77 people has a special significance for journalists in Australia, and not just because Breivik summoned the names of John Howard, Peter Costello, George Pell and Keith Windschuttle in the manifesto he wrote before the slayings.

There are a number of issues newsrooms here will be considering. Should we broadcast or publish the five-week trial? If it is broadcast or printed, how can we do so responsibly? And is there any advantage to be gained from putting his extreme views on the public agenda for debate?

Should journalists be publishing, broadcasting, tweeting and live blogging the trial? By doing so, the media gives him the opportunity to do what he set out to do — publicise his anti-Islam manifesto. But Breivik has a legal right in Norway to explain himself. Doctors doubted whether he could survive. But survive he did--and his testimony became one of the emotional highpoints of the trial.

He lost his best friend, he lost an eye, he suffered brain damage, and he lost his ability to ski, snowmobile and engage in many of the other activities he enjoyed in his native Troms County, in northern Norway. As the testimony showed, however, Viljar managed to keep his sense of humor. Readers who would like a more complete story of Viljar's life before and after Utoya, can find it in Seierstad's book, which gives special attention to the lives of some of Breivik's victims.

Viljar Hanssen: I was at the campsite. My little brother was asleep in the tent. I went to the meeting in the main building to find out what had happened in Oslo. I remember talking to Simon Saebo. My little brother and I made our way down a sort of slope, cliff-edge thing. The bangs were getting nearer and in the end they were really, really close. Then I heard this crazy whistling sound in my right ear and I found myself by the edge of the water. I tried to get up several times, I was a bit sort of Bambi on the ice, you know, and I called out to my brother.

But then I decided the best thing was just to lie down in the fetal position somewhere. I curled myself round a rock on the shoreline and stayed there. The more complex answer is that one of the most fundamental rules of our profession, and what distinguishes barristers from all other advocates such as solicitors, is the cab-rank principle : we are obliged to act for our clients and we cannot refuse to act because the nature of the case is personally objectionable to us or to a section of the public, or because the conduct, opinions or beliefs of the client are unacceptable.

It is enshrined in our code of conduct, and we fight hard to preserve it. That means that we cannot refuse to act for the sex offender who claims that the year-old girl was sexually precocious and "led him on", the antisemitic terrorist who says that the bomb in a public place was just a hoax, the demonstrators who want to kill a cartoonist, or the woman accused of torturing her baby to death.

The rule applies whether the client is paying privately or is publicly funded. And who would want it any other way? It's not for us to substitute our opinion of guilt, still less our distaste or repugnance, for the judgment of the court. What kind of society would we have if barristers could choose not to represent defendants merely because they disapproved of their views?

That's a short route to a police state. How are the poor, the ill educated, the illiterate and the disadvantaged to defend themselves against the state with all its powers and resources if they cannot call upon advocates to guide them through the thickets of the law, to speak on their behalf, and put their case fairly before the court? Is the Breivik case an example of how not to handle high-profile terror cases?

Or does Breivik's ranting make a case for trying terrorists in civilian court in order to discredit their views? Norway is showing the U. It's wrong to give a terror suspect a microphone: "The court is not to be used as a soapbox from which the defendant spouts political views," says Paul Mendelle at Britain's Guardian.