2019 Bærum murder and mosque attack

Philip Manshaus (born ), a 21-year-old Norwegian resident of Bærum, perpetrated the attack. He had a history of experimenting with drugs; at the age of 15, he drove while on LSD and got into a car accident. Johanne Zhangjia Ihle-Hansen (born 18 June 2002) was born in Jiangxi, China, and adopted at 9 months old by Manshaus's stepmother. At her high school, she majored in communications and media. She had a boyfriend from Portugal, who she hoped to move in with after finishing her schooling. She aimed to become a journalist. He openly discussed with his friends antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Holocaust and attempted to convince them of his beliefs, which led to his friends avoiding him. Manshaus's family were not informed of the report. He became increasingly extreme in his anti-immigration, anti-Muslim and antisemitic attitudes, and became cold towards Ihle-Hansen. He refused to greet her and said cruel things to her. He told Ihle-Hansen that she and her boyfriend should not have children because it would be "race mixing", and said that she was not his sister because to be his sister "she would have had to be human". He also made fun of her for her skin color, knowing she was insecure about it. == Planning ==

In the weeks before the attack, Manshaus tried to join the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement, but due to an internal split in the organization and delays in their membership system he never got beyond the first of two planned initiation interviews. Manshaus joined a gun club and indicated that he would try to get semi-automatic weapons. At one point, Ihle-Hansen was delivered a package for him that contained a bulletproof vest. Manshaus's family noticed he had attached newspaper clippings about the Christchurch mosque shootings, a swastika, and information on other terrorist attacks to his wall, and hid it behind a Norwegian flag, after which Ihle-Hansen became afraid he would hurt someone. After he learned his stepmother was considering reporting him to the PST, he took them down, and tried to make it seem as if he was no longer far right. On 8 August, Ihle-Hansen told a friend that it was difficult at home because "my brother hates me", and said that she was afraid of Manshaus. The day before her murder, she texted her boyfriend and expressed frustration with Manshaus's racist views, and told him that his room was full of "Nazi propaganda and newspaper clippings about mass shootings". She said she felt unsafe and that what she was going through was "madness". She also said he was then listening to a speech that expressed racist views against those of Chinese descent. After Ihle-Hansen expressed to her friends her concerns, they decided to inform Ihle-Hansen's mother and inform the police or PST. When she was informed on the morning of 10 August she agreed to inform the PST. Manshaus had a planned list for the attack, listing his weapons and the address of the Islamic Center, as well as "MURDER AT HOME" in all capital letters. He later said that he had decided to kill her because she was not white, and a result he believed that if she was alive, their parents would be deemed "race traitors" during what he viewed as an imminent race war, and that she "represents a group that threatens my people". The mosque attack was planned to intimidate Muslims in Norway, and to kill "as many Muslims as possible". == Shootings ==

In timing the attack, he waited until his stepmother had left the house. On the morning of 10 August 2019, once he knew she had left, he retrieved three guns from his father's gun cabinet: a 6.5×55mm Swedish Mauser 1896-38 rifle, a Baikal IJ-27E double-barreled shotgun, and a .22 long rifle Remington Model 572 Fieldmaster. He then loaded one of the rifles and walked into Ihle-Hansen's bedroom, before 3 p.m. He opened fire in the mosque, hitting no one. Prayers had just ended, with only three elders remaining in the mosque. One of the men, Mohammad Rafiq, approached the gunman and pinned him down, moving Manshaus's weapons away after he dropped them. During the scuffle with the perpetrator, Rafiq overpowered and disarmed him before he could attack anyone else in the mosque. Rafiq is a Pakistani retired Air Force officer who had moved to Bærum to be with his son in 2017. Another elder in the mosque, Mohamed Iqbal, hit the gunman on the head with his rifle to subdue him. Manshaus escaped from his grip 3 times, but was successfully recaptured. == Investigation ==

Shortly after the shooting, Ihle-Hansen was found dead in their family home by police. A bomb and emergency squad both searched the house. There were also claims that a user of an online forum had tried to notify the Norwegian police three times that he suspected an attack would happen, but that local police told him to call the FBI. Police say they are aware of this allegation, but that they are not aware of any such call. The police response took a while, which resulted in criticism and accusations of racial profiling. A commission was set up to investigate the response, which concluded that it could have been done faster but the reasons for it were complicated. == Legal proceedings ==

Manshaus was indicted for terrorism and murder. They also stated that they had no evidence that Manshaus was part of any terror network. The same day, in a court hearing in Oslo District Court, Manshaus was put in pre-trial jail for four weeks with no visitation, mail or media access. Manshaus declared himself not guilty and called for his release. Norwegian prosecutors formally charged Manshaus with murder and terror on 17 February 2020. He later appeared in court on 7 May 2020, where he denied the charges. During the trial, he showed no remorse, saying that he wished he had caused more damage and regretted his lack of planning. Manshaus stated in court that he killed Ihle-Hansen because she was not ethnically Norwegian. Reopening of case; trial in 2025 Manshaus's brother killed himself in 2023; shortly after, Manshaus was admitted to a psychiatric ward due to severe psychosis. As a result, his lawyer asked for the criminal case to be reopened, filing a petition to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, as this, in her view, raised significant doubt as to whether he had been sane when he committed the shooting. According to his lawyer, he had become physically aggressive in prison, shouting that God was speaking to him through other inmates. He had delusions where he believed that he was the reincarnation of Anders Behring Breivik, was the antichrist, and had authored the Bible. The victims' counsel advised against this, arguing that political extremism should not be viewed a sign of mental illness. The petition was accepted, and the case was re-opened March 2024. Experts assessed that he had been psychotic at the time of the crime, and that had this information been available when he was sentenced he would have been instead sentenced to compulsory mental health care. His defense lawyer stated that after he had received mental health care Manshaus distanced himself from his previous beliefs, and that when he was not psychotic he was aware his ideas were a result of mental illness. The commission dealing with his case agreed unanimously, and it was then sent to the court of appeal. The report stated Manshaus had possibly had a "serious disorder" as far back as 2017. In October 2025, Manshaus was resentenced by the court to 21 years in prison with no extended detention. The court's verdict was unanimous; they cited his abandonment of his neo-Nazi views and lack of prior serious crimes as additional rationales. == Aftermath ==

In early reporting on the attack, the murder of his sister was downplayed, with the event mostly being referred to as a failed terrorist attack or mosque shooting. It was initially uncertain why she had been killed, with some papers speculating that she had attempted to stop his plan, though it came out in September that she had been killed over her race. According to local Norwegian media, the mosque said that security would be improved again. EndChan deleted the thread that Manshaus created, and had its primary web domain taken offline following the attack. Solberg and Abid Raja, a Liberal Norwegian politician, spoke together on the day of the attack, assuring the public that places of worship should be safe and calling for plans to break down Islamophobia in the country. but in the aftermath of the shooting again referred to "creeping Islamization". After the shooting, Oslo City Council Leader Raymond Johansen tied the attack to the phrase, criticizing the party for their use of it, with the criticism being echoed by others in later months, including by Raja. Progress Party politician Jon Helgheim instead criticised the term "islamophobia" itself, as a constructed concept. The day after the attack, on the Eid-ul-Adha celebration day, Eid-ul-Adha prayer was led by Imam Al-Sheikh Syed Muhammad Ashraf (Imam Al-Noor Islamic Senter) at the Ton hotel in Sandvika. Prime minister Solberg and other important official figures, as well as a large number of the Muslims attended an Eid Prayer held in Sandvika together with other religious leaders and community members present to show their solidarity. As news of the shooting spread in the media, so did the actions of Rafiq and the other men in the mosque, which a Danish newspaper described as "courageous"; several media outlets described Rafiq as a "hero". Beate Gangås, the Oslo Police Commander-in-Chief, and Lisbeth Hammer Krogh, the mayor of Bærum. A Norwegian philanthropist, Elisabeth Norheim, started a fundraising campaign to help raise money so Rafiq and the other man who helped subdue the attack could undertake the hajj. After the initial goal of 55,000 NOK (~US$6100) for the cost of the two to travel was surpassed, with more than 180,000 NOK (~US$20,000) raised in one day, the organizers said they could also fund the hajj for the third man in the mosque during the attack. The same year, journalist Anne Bitsch wrote (), which discusses what responsibility the wider society has for Manshaus's crimes. The attack was one of several far-right attacks that were influenced by each other in this period, particularly Christchurch shooting copycat attacks, with Manshaus referencing other perpetrators in his announcement message. Manshaus himself was referenced in the writings of Payton Gendron, the perpetrator of the 2022 Buffalo shooting, who also wrote his name on one of the guns used in the attack. == References ==