AN IRISH MAN who befriended Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik has told how the perpetrator of two deadly attacks “just seemed like a normal, nice guy”.

The man, who wished to be named only as Frank, said he became friends with Breivik online and spoke to him every night for several years. The two played multiplayer game World of Warcraft as part of a larger group of people. Frank described the moment he heard about the Norwegian killings:

I was at my father’s 70th birthday and I got a phone call from another friend of mine who plays the game telling me that I should turn on the telly, that Anders was on the telly. He said ‘He’s after killing a load of people.’ I thought he was joking. But I looked at Sky News and there he was.

Speaking on Today FM’s Ray D’Arcy Show Frank said Breivik, who has confessed to killing 77 people in twin bomb and gun attacks in Oslo and Utoya island, showed an aptitude for the game’s strategic elements. “He was always very tactical,” Frank said. He added that this appeared to be replicated in the way Breivik carried out the killings. “It seems that translates,” Frank said. “That he was very cold. He was very calm and cool and collected and went about it as if they weren’t even people, as if it was just a job that he had to do, a quest.”

Frank also said that Breivik, who was also his Facebook friend, “used to talk about his parents, about when they broke up and divorced.

He talked about his mother a lot; he wouldn’t play on Sundays because he would be visiting her. He just seemed like a normal, nice guy.

Read more: Full coverage of the Norway massacres >

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