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2022

Oslo Nightclub Shooting – Norway

2022 · 2 other eventsSee the year ↓4 March 2022Hamas listed in full as a terrorist organisationClick to read →12 August 2022Salman Rushdie stabbedClick to read →You are hereJanMarMayJulSepNovDec
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Introduction

Just after 1am on Saturday 25 June 2022, a man opened fire outside two bars on Rosenkrantz' gate in central Oslo. One was the London Pub, a long-standing bar in the city's gay scene, and the other was Per på hjørnet, next door. Oslo Pride was underway, and the parade was due to start that afternoon.

The shooter was Zaniar Matapour, an Iranian-born Norwegian citizen, then 44. Police said he was already known to them and to the Police Security Service (PST). He was arrested at the scene.

Two men were killed and nine others were wounded by gunfire; the ABC reported 21 people injured in all. The Oslo District Court later found he had fired ten rounds from a submachine gun and eight from a handgun. The court was explicit about the target: "The attack undoubtedly targeted gay people. The goal was both to kill as many gay people as possible and to instill fear in LGBTQ people more broadly."

What the court was told about the hour before

According to the prosecution, about fifty minutes before the first shot Matapour sent an audio file to an associate in which he pledged allegiance (a bay'ah) to Islamic State. PST described the attack as an Islamist act of terror and raised the national threat level from 3 to 5, the top of the scale.

Government Response

That morning

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre was told during the night. Shortly after 6am he called the attack shocking and deeply disturbing. At the government's press conference he said that when the shooting started, happiness, laughter and love had been turned into hate, bullets and murder. He said the queer community were the victims.

Oslo Pride cancelled the parade and the rest of the day's events on police advice. The organisers said they would mark the day from home. The leader of Oslo's city government, Raymond Johansen, said the events were postponed, not abandoned.

A warning, five days out

Matapour was not an unknown man. An evaluation commissioned by the National Police Directorate and PST, reported in June 2023, found that the Norwegian Intelligence Service had warned PST at an emergency meeting that an operation was about to take place in a Scandinavian country, with several clues pointing to Norway. The warning arrived five days before the shooting.

The evaluation found the attack could have been averted if that notification had been handled differently, or if PST had opened a preventive investigation into Matapour in the months before. It found PST held relevant intelligence on him but did not pass it to the police officers responsible for following him up. The Oslo Police operational response on the night was judged adequate, but its crisis communication was not.

PST director Beate Gangås apologised for the misjudgments. Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl called the report serious and said she would follow it up. A later parliamentary committee put the main responsibility for the failure to avert the attack on PST, and found the Intelligence Service had passed on what it had. A separate oversight review found no basis to say the Intelligence Service had provoked the shooting. The trial court reached the same conclusion: the attack would have happened without that contact.

The sentence

On 4 July 2024 the Oslo District Court convicted Matapour of murder and aggravated terrorism. He was sentenced to 30 years' preventive detention (forvaring) with a minimum of 20 years, the longest term available, which can be extended if a court later finds he is still a danger. The court also ordered compensation for the survivors and the families. He denied criminal guilt but did not dispute the shooting. He appealed, then withdrew the appeal before the hearing in February 2025, so the sentence is final.

A second man, Arfan Bhatti, was charged with complicity in aggravated terrorism. He had been in Pakistan on the night of the attack and was extradited in 2024. On 16 January 2026 the Oslo District Court convicted him and imposed the same maximum term of 30 years. He appealed immediately, and his lawyers said he maintains he had no involvement.

Summary

On the night before the Oslo Pride parade, a man known to the security service shot into the crowd outside a gay bar and the bar next door, killing two people and wounding nine. A court found that the target was gay people, and that he had pledged allegiance to Islamic State in the hour before.

The Prime Minister spoke before dawn, and the parade was cancelled. An official evaluation later found PST had been warned five days earlier and had not acted on it, and the director of PST apologised. The court gave the shooter the longest sentence in Norwegian law. A second man, who was abroad that night, was convicted of helping to plan the attack and has appealed.

In Australia, the attack was reported by the ABC and SBS. The verdict and the evaluation are both public documents.

You be the judge.

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