The Australian white supremacist who murdered 51 people at two New Zealand mosques in 2019 will appeal his conviction and life sentence, a court official said yesterday.
Armed with an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons, Brenton Tarrant attacked Friday worshipers at two mosques in March 2019, livestreaming the killings as he went. His victims were all Muslim and included children, women and the elderly.
Tarrant pleaded guilty to 51 charges of murder and 40 counts of attempted murder, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — the first time such a sentence was delivered in New Zealand.
Photo: AP
“An appeal against convictions and sentence has been filed,” said Liz Kennedy, a spokeswoman in the Office of the Chief Justice.
Last year, Tarrant’s lawyer, Tony Ellis, said his client had believed “the simplest way out was to plead guilty,” which amounted to a plea made under duress.
Ellis yesterday said he had been sacked and was unable to comment further on the case.
During sentencing in August 2020, Judge Cameron Mander said he was imposing the harshest possible term for Tarrant’s “inhuman” actions.
“Your crimes are so wicked, that even if you are detained until you die it will not exhaust the requirements of punishment and denunciation,” Mander said at the time.
After Tarrant’s 17-minute livestream of his mosque attacks, Facebook said it removed a staggering 1.5 million videos that proliferated within the first 24 hours showing the harrowing viral footage.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS