KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent — The Office of the Prime Minister on Wednesday circulated to the media this photograph (above) of Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves signing the book of condolence at the Embassy of Norway in London, following the terror attacks in Norway last week.
The photo also confirmed that Gonsalves is in Europe for his three-week vacation, which began on July 8, his first since 2005.
Gonsalves, in announcing his vacation, said that he would be travelling outside of the Caribbean but did not say where he would go.
“I will be taking, really for the first time, a proper vacation,” he said in early July.
Gonsalves signed the book of condolences opened for the 76 persons who died when Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, 32, set off a bomb and went on a shooting rampage in Norway.
Breivik has admitted to fashioning and detonating the large bomb and then shooting and killing the 68 people.
He faces up to 21 years in prison or three months for each person who died when he set off the bomb in downtown Oslo, near the offices of the Prime Minister of Norway and several other governmental buildings.
The explosion killed eight people and wounded 26 and Breivik then travelled to the island of Utoya where he attacked participants at a Norwegian Labour Party youth camp.
He posed as a police officer and used a variety of weapons to kill a further 68 people and wound 66.
Breivik’s lawyer, Geir Lippestad has declined to say whether his client would plead insanity as a defence when his case finally reached the trial stage.
He described Breivik as “very cold,” distanced from the real world and believing that he was a warrior destined to die for the eventual salvation of European Christian values.
Breivik’s far-right militant ideology is described in an online manifesto “2083 – A European Declaration of Independence” which he posted on the day of the attacksunder the anglicised pseudonym Andrew Berwick.
The document details Breivik’s worldview, which includes support for varying degrees of cultural conservatism, right-wing populism, anti-Islamization, “far-right Zionism”, and Serbian paramilitarism.
It argues for the violent annihilation of Islam, “culturalMarxism”, and multiculturalism, to preserve a Christianized Europe.