Norway killer Breivik: I would have done it again

Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik defended his massacre of 77 people, insisting Tuesday he would do it all again and calling his rampage the most ''spectacular'' attack by a nationalist militant since World War II.

Reading a prepared statement in court, the anti-Muslim extremist lashed out at Norwegian and European governments for embracing immigration and multiculturalism.

He claimed to be speaking as a commander of an ''anti-communist'' resistance movement and an anti-Islam militant group he called the Knights Templar. Prosecutors have said the group does not exist.

Maintaining he acted out of ''goodness, not evil'' to prevent a wider civil war, Breivik vowed, ''I would have done it again.''

Pressed by prosecutors later to explain what he meant, he compared his attacks to the U.S. atom bombs on Japan during World War II.

''They did it for something good. To prevent further war,'' Breivik said.

Breivik has five days to explain why he set off a bomb in Oslo's government district on July 22, killing eight people, and then gunned down 69 others at a Labor Party youth camp outside the Norwegian capital. He denies criminal guilt, saying he was acting in self-defense, and claims the targets were part of a conspiracy to ''deconstruct'' Norway's cultural identity.

''The attacks on July 22 were a preventive strike. I acted in self-defense on behalf of my people, my city, my country,'' he said as he finished his statement, in essence a summary of the 1,500-page manifesto he posted online before the attacks. ''I therefore demand to be found innocent of the present charges.''

He didn't express regret, but told prosecutors he would have preferred attacking a conference of Norwegian journalists instead of the Utoya youth camp, where most of the victims were teenagers.

''Unfortunately I wasn't able to carry out'' an attack against that conference, he added.

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