The father of the young man suspected of single-handedly killing 93 people in Norway’s worst post-war tragedy has told of his shock as he came across his son’s picture on the Internet. Retired diplomat Jens Breivik described his son Anders Behring Breivik, who he said he has not seen since he was 15 or 16, as an “ordinary boy.” “I was reading the news on the Internet and suddenly I saw his name and picture,” Breivik senior toldNorway’s Verdens Gang newspaper. “I am in a state of shock, it’s absolutely horrific to hear that,” added Breivik, who is divorced from the suspect’s mother and currently lives in the south of France. “We never lived together but we had some contact during his childhood,” he said. “When he was younger, he was an ordinary boy but not very communicative. He was not interested in politics at the time.” The suspect mentions his father in the tract, who he says was a diplomat posted to London and Paris and who remarried after his birth, while his mother married a soldier who became his stepfather. He wrote that his biological father and his wife had asked for custody of the boy but were prevented by the Norwegian courts. “I had a good relationship with him and his new wife … until I was 15. The public prosecutor in the nearby town ofCarcassonnesaid police had been deployed outside the house in which both Jens Breivik and his wife were currently staying for their safety. French police were now guarding the couple’s villa, but locals said they had only recently moved to the house.
