![]() ![]() Tarrant faces the possibility of being the first offender in New Zealand sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole. Nothing visibly moved the gunman – not a description of his murder of a three-year-old child not that of a woman whose spinal injury will make her need a wheelchair for life, nor another whom he shot and later ran over as he fled one of the mosques. Wearing a grey prison sweatshirt and track pants he had a blank expression as he sat behind a glass barrier, occasionally looking around the room.Įarly in the hearing, he had twisted his fingers together so tightly that they had turned white. ![]() Tarrant was brought into the dock by four police officers with his hands shackled to his waist. On the day of the attacks, the terrorist had petrol cans in his car that, the police said, he intended to use as incendiary devices.Īfter the official account of events on Monday the first of dozens of victims due to speak during the four-day hearing read emotional statements in front of the gunman, in a subdued courtroom that was sparsely populated due to coronavirus restrictions. While there, he flew a drone over Al Noor mosque, scoping the building’s entrances and exits. He moved to New Zealand from Australia in 2017 and began planning the attacks, researching various New Zealand mosques, viewing plans of the buildings he intended to attack and making a trip to Christchurch from the southern city of Dunedin, where he lived, two months before the massacre. On Monday, a prosecutor read the authorities’ version of events, telling the court of the detail in which Tarrant had planned the attacks, buying multiple firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition, ballistic armour and military-style vests. It also meant there has been no official account of the killings. His decision to abandon an earlier plea of not guilty averted a lengthy trial that was expected to take months. Tarrant, a self-professed white supremacist who broadcast part of the massacre live on Facebook, pleaded guilty in March this year to 51 counts of murder, 40 of attempted murder and a charge of terrorism.
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