Breivik, who killed 77 in Norway, said to have renounced violence

Mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik now renounces violence, his lawyer said yesterday, the same day Norway commemorated the third anniversary of the massacre in which he killed 77 people.

Breivik, 35, "has now become very clear that he doesn't support violence and that he doesn't encourage others to carry out violent acts", his lawyer Tor Jordet told local media.

Breivik committed the bloodiest massacre in Norway since the end of the second world war on July 22, 2011, killing eight people with a bomb near a building housing the left-wing government in Oslo, and then opening fire on a Labour Youth camp on the island of Utoeya, killing 69 people, most of them teenagers.

At the time, he said his actions were "cruel but necessary" to save Europe from Islam and multiculturalism.

The right-wing extremist is serving 21 years in prison, the maximum sentence in Norway, which could be extended indefinitely as long as he is still considered a threat to society.

Jordet declined to elaborate and said the anniversary should be centred on the survivors and the victims' families. In the presence of the former Labour prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, who led the country at the time of the attacks, Prime Minister Erna Solberg laid a spray of flowers and led a minute's silence outside of the building where the first attacked occurred.