Earlier in the day, the alleged perpetrator of the fatal shooting, described by police as an Islamist with fragile mental health, was remanded in custody for four weeks.
The Pride march, which was to be held on Saturday afternoon in Oslo, had been postponed indefinitely after the attack which left two dead and 21 injured in the night from Friday to Saturday.
Organizers also canceled all Oslo Pride-related events, on the recommendation of the police.
Despite this renewed call on Monday with the support of the organizers, several thousand people gathered Monday evening on the Town Hall Square, in a wave of rainbow flags.
“You can’t cancel us” or “Sexual freedom”, said signs held by the demonstrators, determined not to give up.
On Monday, the police and internal intelligence publicly expressed concern about the risk of new attacks, after having already raised their attack alert to the maximum level this weekend.
“We fear that there is a new act. We have seen cases of it in the past in other countries, and it is not uncommon for some to take inspiration from it,” said the head of domestic intelligence PST , Roger Berg, on public television NRK.
Placed in pre-trial detention for four weeks, the alleged perpetrator of the shooting, now officially identified as Zaniar Matapour, 43, will also not be able to have any contact (visit, mail, etc.) with the outside world until 25 July, the Oslo court decided.
This Norwegian of Iranian origin is suspected of having killed two men aged 54 and 60 and injured 21 other people by opening fire near a gay bar, the London Pub, in the heart of downtown Oslo. , in full festivities related to the LGBT Pride march.
– Silence of the suspect –
The Norwegian police are still trying to determine the motives for this attack.
Suspected of “terrorist act”, homicide and attempted homicide, Zaniar Matapour refuses at this stage to be heard for fear, according to his lawyer, that the video recordings of his interrogations will be manipulated by the investigators.
He must undergo a preliminary examination by experts to assess his mental health and therefore his criminal responsibility.
On the radar of the PST since 2015 because suspected of radicalization, he belongs, according to the police, to “an extremist Islamist network”.
The police say they are working on several theories: the attack motivated by ideology, the hate crime against the homosexual community, the gesture of an unbalanced person, even a combination of several factors.
The PST claims not to have detected “violent intentions” when the services had an interview with him last month.
The way the police and the PST handled the episode will be assessed, announced the Minister of Justice, Emilie Enger Mehl.
Arrived in Norway in his childhood, Zaniar Matapour, today a father living on social benefits according to the media, has been implicated and convicted on several occasions for relatively minor acts in the past.
