Far-right blogger says Breivik ‘was not a lone wolf’

Paul Ray, a blogger and former member of the English Defence League based in Malta on a self-imposed ‘exile’ told Norway’s NTB news agency that police were “very interested” in British far-right cells mentioned by the attacker, Anders Behring Breivik.

“I don’t believe Breivik is a lone wolf ... he is part of a larger movement which has its own agenda,” the Daily Telegraph reported Ray as saying. “They (the police) were very interested in the British cells,” added Ray. “They asked me if I was (head of) a cell.”

In a statement he released shortly before embarking on his July 22 killing spree, Behring Breivik had spoken of the existence of secret cells that he said came under a new order of Knights Templar.

Ray – real name Paul Sonato – came to Norway voluntarily to speak to police investigating the twin attacks in Oslo and a nearby island.

He has basked in the publicity of being credited as the unnamed “mentor” mentioned by the 32-year-old Behring Breivik in the 1,500-page manifesto he posted online shortly before carrying out the attacks.

Describing himself as a crusader at war against multiculturalism and Islam, Anders Behring Breivik explained in the document that he once had “a relatively close relationship” with an Englishman he gave the pseudonym “Richard”, “who became my mentor.”

Ray says he heads the “Knights Templar” movement and runs a “Richard the Lionhearted” blog, and said he recognised himself in the Norwegian right-wing extremist’s description.

He has called the July 22 attacks “pure evil”.

Behring Breivik has confessed to setting off a bomb outside government offices in Oslo killing eight people, before going on a shooting rampage on the nearby island of Utoeya, where the ruling Labour Party’s youth wing was hosting a summer camp, killing 69 others, many of them teenagers.

He is currently being held in solitary confinement at a high-security prison near Oslo, and has claimed he acted alone.