The man accused of shooting dead 51 Muslim worshipers in Christchurch mosque attacks in March smiled as his lawyers entered not guilty pleas to multiple murder and terrorism charges yesterday.
Brenton Tarrant’s barrister told the Christchurch High Court that his client was pleading not guilty to all charges, prompting anger from survivors and relatives of those killed in the March 15 attacks.
The self-proclaimed white supremacist appeared in court via audio-visual link from a maximum-security prison in Auckland, New Zealand, for the brief hearing.
Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian national, was committed to stand trial next year on 51 counts of murder, 40 of attempted murder and engaging in a terrorist act.
His smiling demeanor enraged survivors still reeling from the worst massacre in modern New Zealand history, who had packed the courthouse’s public gallery for a glimpse of the accused.
“It just shows he’s an animal,” Mustafa Boztas, who was wounded in the thigh, told reporters outside the court. “I feel sad that someone can be so unhuman and take the lives of innocent people.”
Abdul Aziz, who confronted the gunman at the Linwood mosque and chased him off the premises, said that he wanted to see Tarrant’s face.
“He was laughing there [in court] and he thinks he was so tough, but he was a coward when he faced me and he ran,” he said. “He was not man enough to stand up that time and [now] he’s standing there and laughing.”
“Put me [together with him] for 15 minutes in one cell and then we will see if he can laugh any more,” he added.
Tarrant allegedly opened fire in the packed al-Noor mosque during Friday prayers, then traveled across town to continue the carnage in the suburban Linwood mosque, while livestreaming his actions on social media.
The court heard that mental health assessments had found Tarrant was fit to stand trial.
“No issue arises regarding the defendant’s fitness to plead, to instruct counsel and to stand his trial. A fitness hearing is not required,” Judge Cameron Mander said in a statement shortly after the hearing.
The judge set a trial date of May 4 next year, with proceedings expected to last at least six weeks, although some lawyers warned that the case — sure to be one of the biggest ever in New Zealand — could go twice as long.
“The court endeavors to bring serious criminal cases to trial within a year of arrest. The scale and complexity of this case makes this challenging,” Mander said.
Didar Hossain, whose uncle and friends were killed in the attack, expressed disappointment that the justice system was taking so long to deal with the case.
“It should be finished in six months, that would be good for us. We are not happy,” he said.
Tarrant was remanded in custody to appear for a case review hearing to be held on Aug. 15.
Mander barred news outlets from taking photographs or video of Tarrant’s latest court appearance, although he said that images from an earlier hearing could be used.
He also lifted suppression orders on the names of those who were wounded in the attacks, except for those younger than 18.
The killings badly rattled normally peaceful New Zealand, with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern earning international acclaim for her compassionate response toward the country’s small, tight-knit Muslim community.
Her government tightened gun laws and set about reviewing laws dealing with hate speech, as well as spearheading global efforts to ensure social media giants do more to combat online extremism.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
RSS