Anders Behring Breivik was escorted by guards into an Oslo courtroom packed with dozens of reporters and spectators, including survivors of his rampage at a youth camp near the capital who were seeing him in person for the first time since the July 22 attack.
"I am a military commander in the Norwegian resistance movement," Breivik said before the judge interrupted him and told him to stick to the issue at hand — his further detention.
The court extended his custody 12 more weeks until Feb. 6, but decided to gradually lift the restrictions on his media access, visitors and mail. Breivik is being held pending his trial on terror charges.
If found guilty, he could be sentenced to 21 years in prison. An alternative custody arrangement — if he is still considered a danger to the public — could keep him behind bars indefinitely.
At the end of Monday's hearing, the 32-year-old Norwegian asked Judge Torkjel Nesheim if he could address survivors and victims' relatives but was turned down.
Previous court hearings in the case have been closed to the public. At the end of Monday's hearing, the judge lifted a ban on reporting the proceedings.
Investigators say Breivik set off a fertilizer bomb outside government headquarters on July 22, killing eight people, before heading to an island retreat, where youth sections of Norway's governing Labor Party were holding their annual summer camp.
Disguised as a police officer, he opened fire on scores of panicked youths, shooting some as they fled into the lake. Sixty-nine people were killed on Utoya Island before Breivik surrendered to a police SWAT team.
Tim Viskjer, who survived the shooting spree on Utoya, watched Breivik's hearing on a video screen in another room in the court house. "I thought he seemed cold and inhuman," Viskjer told Norwegian broadcaster NRK. "It was uncomfortable, but for me I moved on a little bit after seeing and hearing the suspect."
