BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) – Police have arrested a Norwegian citizen in Hungary on suspicion that he was planning an extremist attack modeled after a 2011 massacre in Norway that killed 77 people, authorities said Tuesday.
The National Investigation Office of the Hungarian police said the 45-year-old man had posted numerous videos to the internet in which he described his plans to commit the attacks.
After analyzing the videos and identifying the suspect, Hungary´s Counter Terrorism Center arrested the man in a Budapest apartment on June 14 and confiscated his electronic devices.
In the videos, the suspect speaks Norwegian and English, police said, and threatens to carry out attacks in airports, railway stations and on airplanes.
“I will destroy the innocent,” he said in one video, according to police.
The suspect also described his desire to surpass the crimes committed by Norwegian far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in bomb-and-gun massacres in Norway in 2011.
During the latest investigation, Norwegian authorities informed Hungarian police that the man had earlier been convicted of numerous violent and sexual crimes in Norway. He has been remanded to Hungary´s Forensic Psychiatric and Mental Institution, according to police.
In Norway, the National Criminal Investigation Service confirmed to The Associated Press they had been contacted by police in Hungary, but declined to comment on an investigation in another country.