Interpol has reportedly requested Maltese police to investigate Paul Ray and his alleged links to Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. At the request of the Norwegian police, the Maltese authorities have been asked specifically to identify Mr Ray’s acquaintances and movements in Malta.

Norwegian leading newspaper Dagbladet reported that Interpol has filed a request with the Maltese police to investigate Mr Ray and that it will be the Security Services which will be assisting the Norwegian investigators with the line of inquiry.

The Maltese authorities were not in an immediate position to confirm the report yesterday.

In the meantime, the Norwegian police have confirmed they want to question the British ‘Knight Templar’ who believes he influenced Breivik. In an interview in another section of the Maltese press yesterday, Mr Ray said he would be willing to travel to Norway to discuss anything the Norwegian authorities wanted.

In his 1,500-page manifesto, Breivik described Mr Ray, formerly Paul Sonato, as his mentor and the request for an investigation comes after Mr Ray said he had been in direct online contact with the anti-Muslim extremist who killed 77 people in Norway last week.

Mr Ray, a former member of the English Defence League who is said to have fled the UK for fear of arrest in 2008 over internet postings allegedly inciting racial hatred, this week conceded that he may have been the inspiration for the Norwegian mass murderer, but deplored his actions. He also told the press this week, “I wish the police would come and talk to me because I have nothing to hide.”

He said he believed he had had Facebook contact with Breivik, adding that he had rejected a friend request from the Norwegian because “he did not like the look of him”.

The British press this week also revealed that Mr Ray was kicked out of the church that he belonged to in Malta two weeks before Breivik’s killing spree.

He had reportedly been worshipping at the Word of Life Pentecostal Holiness Church in Qormi for about two years. Two members of the church told The Times (of London) that he would not be welcomed back after he had criticised the “leadership” of the church − a branch of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, headquartered in Oklahoma City in the United States.

Pastor Joseph Agius was quoted as saying, “I would prefer for him not to enter our church any more. Not because of these allegations but because of his attacks on the leadership.”

Mr Agius and another member of the church, who asked not to be identified, said Mr Ray did not appear to have a group of like-minded people within the church, and both said they did not know Nick Greger, a convicted neo-Nazi who has appeared with Mr Ray in a number of videos filmed in Malta and posted on the Internet.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr Ray said that there had been “turbulence” within the church three weeks earlier, adding that he felt “perhaps God knew this [Breivik’s massacre] was going to happen”.

‘Gathering’ in Malta

A number of videos on the internet show 35-year-old Mr Ray in Malta with two of Europe’s most dangerous neo-Nazis − Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair (who was allegedly behind a dozen killings in Northern Ireland as head of the Ulster Defence Association) and Nick Greger − at a “gathering” convened in Malta in March.

The film shows the three men visiting historic churches around Malta, cut together with footage showing UFF terrorists and Mr Greger with a Kalashnikov, set to a trance music track and illustrated with slides of Templar Knights.

Mr Adair was expelled from the Ulster Defence Association due to violence in 2002 and was the first to be convicted of terrorism in Northern Ireland. In 1994 he was convicted of the murders of at least 12 Catholics. He has now dedicated himself to the struggle for an all white Britain

Nick ‘The Nazi’ Greger is a German-British neo-Nazi, who along with Mr Ray and Mr Adair had decided to take over control of EDL. He presents himself on his YouTube channel as a “former neo-Nazi leader, convicted terrorist, insurgent wars, artist, writer and priest”.

He has been banned from the UK and reportedly also lives in Malta.

A week later, Norway mourns 77 victims of massacre

Norway has begun burying its dead a week after an anti-Muslim extremist killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage. Mourners of all ages vowed they would not let the massacre threaten their nation’s openness and democracy.

An 18-year-old Muslim girl was the first victim to be laid to rest since the gunman opened fire at a political youth camp and bombed the government headquarters in Oslo.

After a funeral service on Friday in the Nesodden church outside the capital, Bano Rashid, a Kurdish immigrant from Iraq, was buried in a Muslim rite. Sobbing youth accompanied her coffin, which was draped in a Kurdish flag.

The attack will “not destroy Norway’s commitment to democracy, tolerance and fighting racism,” Labour Party youth-wing leader Eskil Pedersen said at a memorial service in Oslo.

Pedersen, who was on the island retreat of Utoya when the gunman’s attack began, said: “Long before he stands before a court we can say: he has lost.”

Pedersen said the youth organisation would return to Utoya next year for its annual summer gathering, a tradition that stretches back decades.

Police raised the death toll to 77, from 76, and said all those killed in the 22 July terror attacks in Oslo and on Utoya have now been identified and those reported missing have been accounted for.

Norway suspect was considering other targets

The anti-Muslim extremist who has confessed to a bombing and youth camp massacre that killed 77 people in Norway has told investigators that he also considered attacking other targets linked to the government or the prime minister’s Labour Party, police said yesterday.

During a 10-hour questioning session on Friday, Anders Behring Breivik asked interrogators how many people he had killed in the July 22 attacks, and “showed no emotion” when they told him, police attorney Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby told reporters in Oslo.

The 32-year-old Norwegian has confessed to setting off a car bomb that killed eight people in the centre of Oslo and then gunning down scores of young people from the Labour Party at their annual camp on an island northwest of the capital. Sixty-nine of them died.

Kraby said Breivik had considered other possible targets to attack as he prepared what Norway’s Police Security Service has described as meticulously prepared by a “lone-wolf” attacker.

“The other targets were government and Labour Party targets,” said Kraby.

He declined to confirm a report in Norwegian tabloid VG saying Breivik had described the Royal Palace and the Labour Party’s head office as potential targets. The paper did not cite its sources.

“They were targets that one would say are natural for terror attacks,” Kraby told reporters.

Breivik released a 1,500-page manifesto before the attacks in which he ranted against Muslims and a left-wing political elite he claims is destroying Europe’s cultural heritage by allowing unfettered immigration.

Norwegian authorities say he was not on their database of right-wing extremists and appears to have prepared his attacks for years, without telling anyone, even his friends and family. They have not found anything to support his claims of being part of a militant network of modern-day crusaders plotting a series of coups d’etat across Europe.