18/10/21
Pictured: Bow-and-arrow 'terrorist' speaks to police outside his home
Pictured: Bow-and-arrow 'terrorist' speaks to police outside his home after he threatened to kill his father - a year before rampage that left five dead . . . and three years after he posted warning video as 'Muslim messenger'
Espen Andersen Bråthen, 37, named as the Norway 'terrorist' who cops say was a radicalised Muslim convert
Photo has emerged showing Bråthen speaking to officers outside his home in August last year, just yards from where he began last night's bow and arrow attack which killed five people.
2017 video also surfaced in which Bråthen calls himself 'a messenger' and says 'bear witness that I am Muslim'
Meanwhile police have revealed that some of Bråthen's victims - four men and one man, all aged from 50 to 70 - were killed in their homes, while others died in the street
They say he used three weapons in the attack, which also wounded three, but did not reveal what they are
This is the moment the 'terror attacker' who killed five in a bow and arrow rampage in Norway was questioned by police outside his house a year ago - three years after uploading a warning video in which he called himself 'a messenger' and declared: 'Bear witness that I am a Muslim'.
The photograph, taken in August 2020 by a nervous neighbour, shows Espen Andersen Bråthen outside his Kongsberg home with two officers. It is unclear exactly what they were speaking about, though the same month he was accused of breaching a restraining order taken out by his father who he had recently threatened to kill.
The picture emerged at the same time as an old YouTube video, which Bråthen uploaded to the site in 2017. In it, he delivers a screed that has been badly translated into English, in which he asks viewers 'is this what you want?', calls himself 'a messenger' and says: 'I come with a warning'.
Bråthen is now in custody, where he has confessed to killing four women and one man, all aged between 50 and 70, and wounding three others during a half-hour attack on the town of Kongsberg shortly after 6pm Wednesday. Police say he is a Muslim convert who was flagged as radicalised, and described the attack as 'a terrorist act'.
Bråthen began his attack with a bow and arrow outside a supermarket, but police have since revealed he used two other weapons during the half-hour assault - though they did not identify them. Some victims died in the street, prosecutors said, but others were killed in their homes.
Police have released few other details about Bråthen, but court documents and testimony from neighbours paint a bleak picture: An 'unstable' loner with a collection of weapons who rarely left his flat, hadn't held a job in years, suffered from mental health problems, used drugs, and was estranged from his family.
In other developments:
Witnesses described hearing 'women's screams' at the scene of the attack, adding: 'It was a death cry'
Bråthen is currently being questioned by police and is cooperating, though has not been formally charged
Police say he has admitted being behind the attack, but has not yet entered a formal plea to criminal charges
He is Danish citizen via his mother but has Norwegian father, was born in Norway, and lived there 'all his life'
Records suggest Bråthen has been out of work since the early 2000s. It is not clear what he did before then
Forensic officers were working at an address close to the crime scene and have questioned local residents
Bråthen will undergo psychological examination to determine whether he is fit to stand trial.
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