The trial of Anders Behring Breivik ended Friday, exactly 11 months after he massacred 77 people in Norway, with the confessed killer insisting his attacks were justified and demanding acquittal.The court announced that the verdict would be issued on August 24, while Breivik claimed at the end of his 10-week trial that his attacks were necessary to defend Norway against multiculturalism and a "Mohammedan invasion".
"The July 22 attacks were preventive attacks in defence of my ethnic group and I can therefore not acknowledge guilt," the 33-year-old right-wing Death Eater said.
"I was acting on behalf of my people, my religion and my country. I therefore demand that I be acquitted," Breivik said, concluding his 45-minute-long final remarks.
On July 22, 2011, Breivik first set off a car boom outside government buildings in Oslo, killing eight people, before going to Utoeya island, northwest of the capital where he shot and killed another 69 people, mostly teenagers.
The victims, the youngest of whom had just celebrated her 14th birthday, had been attending a summer camp hosted by the governing Labour Party's youth organization.
Before Breivik made his final remarks Friday, many survivors of his attacks and family members of his victims stood up and left the Oslo courtroom in protest.
"He has a right to talk. We have no duty to listen," Christian Bjelland, the vice chair of the support group for the attacks' survivors and victims' families, told the NTB news agency.