A police officer said to the father of two teenage girls on the island Utoya that his girls “should simply call the police themselves” when he tried to warn police about an armed attack that broke on the island, he told a Norwegian newspaper.
After receiving a call from his daughter, Geir Johnsen hit a wall of mistrust, comments AFP.
“What happened is that I was not believed at all when I said what my daughter called me from the Utoya island. I was told that, if that’s the case, the children should call the police themselves . This despite the fact that I begged them to take me seriously”, he said for the local newspaper Fremover.
“I think I said: ‘Not much help, old fairy’, and she told me to not call her a fairy”, Johnsen said that he told the police officer, after two or three minutes of “frustrating” discussion.
The powerful explosion of a car bomb in central Oslo, an hour and a half before the armed attack on Utoya island drew police attention, in a first phase, leaving the field free for the alleged attacker, Anders Breivik Behring, who was en route to the island.
Police acknowledged that they came only an hour after being informed of the attack, especially because there was no intervention helicopter available, prompting criticism from both those who escaped the attack and the media.
Freddy Lie, another father who has lost a daughter and another was wounded in the attack on the Utoya island said Monday that the police response was “the attack takes place in Qslo” when he warned them of the armed attack, after being alerted by one of his daughters on the island.