"The Passion" Sparks Neo-Nazi Confession in Norway

Mon Mar 29, 9:26 AM ET

OSLO (Reuters) - A Norwegian neo-Nazi has confessed to two bombings a decade ago after a pang of repentance triggered by watching U.S. director Mel Gibson's controversial film "The Passion of the Christ."

Johnny Olsen, 41, went to police after watching the movie about the death of Christ to admit that he was behind the previously unexplained bombings against anarchist squatters in Oslo in the mid-1990s.

"The trigger that made him go to police and confess was that movie," his lawyer, Fridtjof Feydt, told Reuters Monday. He said his client had long been concerned with issues such as reconciliation and redemption.

The weekend confession prompted police to charge Olsen with arson. No one died in the bombings in 1994 and 1995 during a wave of street fights between neo-Nazis and anarchists.

It was at least the second confession sparked by Gibson's film, which has been criticized for graphic violence. A Texan man admitted last week, after seeing the movie, to murdering a 19-year-old woman who was pregnant with his child.

"This does not change my view of the film in the slightest," Oslo's Lutheran bishop Gunnar Staalsett told the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang Monday, reiterating his condemnation of the movie as glorifying sadism and torture.