NEW ZEALAND MOSQUE ATTACKS: PM ARDERN VOWS ACCOUNTABILITY AHEAD OF MASSACRE REPORT

Mon 07 December 2020:

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday vowed accountability for the families of last year’s Christchurch mosque attack victims, ahead of the public release of a major report into the country’s worst massacre.

“I absolutely appreciate the community will want to see accountability in terms of implementation. They will want to see who is responsible for coordinating some of those efforts…and we will be providing that,” Ardern told a regular media briefing.

Brenton Tarrant, an Australian white supremacist, killed 51 people and injured 40 more at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre on March 15, 2019.

“We wanted to ensure that if there were any failings by government agencies — if there was anything that could have been done to prevent the attacks — that we identified them and that we learnt from them”, Ardern said.

She added that recommendations of the “very comprehensive” report span a number of areas, and it may take some time to implement all of the findings.

The findings of a royal commission inquiry into the attack will be made public in parliament on Tuesday. The inquiry was formed to look at whether there were any failings by government agencies and if the mass shooting could have been prevented.

The 792-page report took about 18 months to finish, and contains interviews with hundreds of people including security agencies, Muslim community leaders, international experts and officials in England, Norway and Australia, along with Ardern.

Critics also said security agencies failed to record hate crimes, and ignored the growing threat from white supremacists because they were too focused on the risk of Islamist terrorism.

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