Washington: Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik planned to assassinate US President Barack Obama when he visited the country to collect his Nobel Prize in 2009.
Breivik, who admitted carrying out twin attacks in Oslo on 22 July 2011, had plotted to attack the Nobel award ceremony with a car bomb.
He told police that he had earlier planned to bomb the Nobel ceremony as a symbolic target with millions watching across the world, but he scrapped the plan, as security would be too tight to get the bomb close enough to Oslo City Hall where the award was presented.
According to Norwegian paper, Dabladet, Breivik told police that an attack on the Nobel ceremony would also kill too few ‘traitors’.
Breivik also said that while Obama was a high profile US target, it would serve his nationalist goals better to target his attacks closer to home, The Daily Mail reports.
Breivik, 32, has confessed to setting off a bomb that ripped through Oslo's government district, killing eight people, then opening fire at the summer camp of the governing Labor Party's youth wing, killing another sixty-nine.
His trial is set to begin on April 16. If declared mentally fit and convicted of terrorism, Breivik would face up to 21 years in prison or an alternative custody arrangement that could keep him behind bars indefinitely.
ANI
First Published: Monday, April 02, 2012, 11:14