The Monster



I needed these beautiful clouds today

 I must deviate from my plan to blog about the bryllupsfest today.  I am sorry.  On Friday, July 22, 2011 a monster exploded a gigantic bomb outside the government office building in Oslo killing at least seven and injuring dozens more.  The same monster then went to a beautiful little island where teenaged boys, girls and young adults were attending summer camp.  These young people were members of the Labor Party's youth association.  The monster dressed as a police officer.  He began gunning down the teenagers and young adults.  It took two hours.  He didn't stop until he ran out of ammunition.  He murdered at least 85 young people at the island.  I don't know how many were wounded.

Today, Sunday, I saw our neighbor wave goodbye to her husband and 18 yr. old son as they took off in the family car.  I was in the back yard.  As our eyes met, she smiled and said, "I'm so glad that he is back!"

"Was he at the island!?"  Tove suspected that he was there, as he had gone last year.

"Yes."  By this time Tove was in the back yard with me.  Tove said, "I thought I saw him on TV this morning on the news when they showed the survivors arriving on the bus in Trondheim!"

"Yes, that was him!"

We went over to her back yard and hugged her.  This is the story of her son as best as I can repeat it.

Our neighbor is from Chechnya.  She has witnessed terror and war in her homeland (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya).  So, on friday when the bomb exploded in Oslo, her son called her from the summer camp on the island and told her not watch the TV because he did not want her to relive what she had gone through in Chechnya.

Five minutes later he either called her or sent her a text message (I am unclear on this point, my Norwegian is not good enough) exclaiming that a man was shooting campers on the island.  She would not hear from  him again for three hours.  Those most certainly were the worst three hours of her life.  Here, the radio and TV were reporting the shooting taking place on the island, but of course there were no details.

Her son witnessed horror upon horror.  He watched several of his friends die.  He watched the monster shoot young people in the leg or stomach, then call out to others that he was a police officer, to come out and help him give first aid to the gunshot victim.  When several people came out to help, he would kill them all, then kill the first victim, then move on.  This happened over and over again.

Our neighbor's son was not one of the survivors who swam away.  He said that he couldn't do that, because he was responsible for a group of younger campers.  He had to keep the younger ones quiet and he had to keep them from trying to help the wounded when the monster called out for help.  The wounded screamed and cried for help, but there was nothing to be done.  I started to cry.  Tove cried.

As I understand Norwegian law, the maximum sentence for any crime in Norway is twenty-one years.  There is no death penalty.  So if the monster goes to prison this year to serve his sentence, he will be out when he is 53.  That is unspeakably unjust.