OSLO - As a prominent member of the ruling Labour party so despised by his client, Geir Lippestad did not appear the obvious choice to defend the man who has confessed to being behind the Norway massacre.
"I was in shock like the rest of Norway," he said of his first reaction to the twin attacks on Friday that killed 76 people.
Shortly after, he received a phone call from the police — Anders Behring Breivik, the confessed perpetrator of the attacks, wanted Lippestad to defend him.
"My first reaction was this is too difficult," the shaven-headed lawyer said.
By setting off a bomb near government offices and later gunning down young Labour party activists trapped on an island, Behring Breivik shocked Norway but also attacked symbols of Lippestad's political beliefs.
Still, after "10, 12 hours thinking about whether to take the case" and discussing it with his family and peers, Lippestad decided to go for it.
"I believe that the legal system is very important in a democracy, someone has to do this job," he explained.
Behring Breivik also clearly layed out — in an online manifesto — his hatred for democracy and those who support it.
So why would he ask Lippestad, with ideals so drastically different to his own, to defend him?
Lippestad is not sure.
"I was asked the question of why he picked me as a lawyer," Lippestad told AFP in an interview.
"One of the reasons, maybe, can be that he had an office near my law office many years ago," he said.
But his past experience also offers some clues.
In 2002, Lippestad defended Ole Nicolai Kvisler, who was sentenced to 17 years in prison for what was described as "the first racist crime" in Norway's history.
Kvisler, who had links to the "Bootboys" neo-Nazi movement, was with an accomplice found guilty of stabbing to death Benjamin Hermansen, a 15-year-old with a Norwegian mother and Ghanaian father, on a parking lot in an Oslo suburb in January 2001.
The crime sparked a wave of indignation in Norway and the prime minister, then as now Jens Stoltenberg, called for "zero tolerance" to racism.
The murder also caused outrage abroad, with Michael Jackson even dedicating an album to "Benny".
Norwegian media have reported that Lippestad has received threats since accepting to defend Behring Breivik, but he would not confirm the reports.
Lippestad does not like talking about himself, saying his own personality is irrelevant to the case. Not even his birthday is known to the public, except for the year, 1964.
But he says he was received a lot of personal support.
"There's . . . lots of loving and caring people," he said.
"I can just walk in the street and I can sit down in a cafe and some people come over to me and talk to me. We live in a special country and I'm very proud of that," he said.
To build his case, the lawyer had to read his client's 1,500-page manifesto, in which he details his ideology, including his raging hatred for Islam, Marxism, and democracy.
But "it is not my task as a lawyer to spread his political message," he said.
Lippestad has not given full details of his defence plan, but his comments hint his client could plead insanity.
"This whole case indicates that he's insane," he told foreign media Tuesday.
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