Norwegian anti-Islamic fanatic Anders Behring Breivik complained yesterday he was being subjected to personal ridicule in court and demanded his killing of 77 people last summer be judged as a battle against immigration.

"I hope you will focus on the issue, not the person," the visibly irritated 33-year-old told the court.

Breivik, who killed eight people with a car bomb in Oslo on July 22 and then shot 69 at a Labour Party summer camp, went on trial on Monday.

Asked how he had changed from a teenage vandal on Oslo's prosperous west side to a methodical killer, he said he helped found a militant group called the "Knights Templar" in 2001 and chafed at prosecution suggestions it was largely imaginary.

"Your intention is to sow doubt whether this network existed," he said at one point, after repeatedly objecting to the way prosecutors phrased their queries.

The original Knights Templar were a medieval brotherhood of knights who prosecuted and financed anti-Islamic crusades.

Breivik has pled not guilty to terrorism and murder charges on grounds of "necessity". He called his victims "traitors" with immigrant-friendly ideas.

After the attacks, the police tried to confirm Breivik's claim he had allies plotting new actions.

Security agencies across the West turned their attention to right-wing extremists, but Norway's police said they concluded Breivik was a lone wolf.

Breivik said he met his first "militant nationalist" in London in 1999, and several more in 2001, after an adolescence marked by confrontations with Muslim youths in Oslo.

"I searched toward European militant nationalists," he said. "The militant nationalist community in Norway has a lot of surveillance."

He said that since 2002 he has had little contact with the people he met in London, and the "cell" he commands consists of himself alone.

The trial of Breivik, who admits the July 22 attacks, continues.