“PLAYING GAMES”: CHRISTCHURCH MOSQUE KILLER MAY APPEAL AGAINST CONVICTIONS AND SENTENCE

Mon 08 November 2021:

According to his lawyer, the Christchurch mosque attacker is considering appealing his life sentence for the 2019 mass shootings, claiming that his guilty pleas were made under duress.

In March of last year, self-described white supremacist Brenton Tarrant pled guilty to 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder, and one count of terrorism.

He was condemned to life in jail without the possibility of parole, the first time in New Zealand that such a punishment has been handed down.

At the time, Tarrant did not mount a defense, but his lawyer, Tony Ellis, said the 31-year-old Australian citizen was now reconsidering his decision to plead guilty.

The gunman told Ellis that he submitted the pleas under pressure because he was subjected to “inhuman and degrading treatment” while on remand.

“He decided that the simplest way out was to plead guilty,” Ellis told Radio New Zealand.

Tarrant assaulted Friday worshippers at Christchurch’s Al Noor mosque and Linwood prayer centre with semi-automatic firearms in March 2019, livestreaming the killings. All of his victims were Muslim women, children, and the elderly.

Before a coroner’s inquiry into the assaults, Ellis reportedly took over as Tarrant’s lawyer and encouraged his client to pursue his right to appeal.

Tarrant allegedly gave him roughly 15 pages of detailed descriptions of his alleged mistreatment, according to him.

According to Stuff, a New Zealand media outlet, Ellis wrote last week in a memorandum to the chief coroner, “By this, he means he was subject to inhuman or degrading treatment while on remand, which prevented a fair trial.”

In his letter to the coroner, Ellis emphasized that every accused or convicted individual had the right to access the courts.

“He was sentenced to over 25 years, that is a sentence of no hope and that’s not allowed, that’s a breach of the Bill of Rights,” Ellis said.

“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.

Victims’ family anger

Abdullah Naeem, whose brother and father were killed in the attacks, told Stuff that the convicted killer was “playing games”.

Naeem, who spoke on behalf of the March 15 Whānau Trust, said he hoped the law would stop the appeal going ahead, so families would not have to go through more trauma.

“Life imprisonment is a light punishment for what he did,” he said. “Any good law will deny his plea and I hope that happens.”

Imam Gamal Fouda said the terrorist “wishes to become famous and grandstanding”, and he believed the courts should “continue to disregard his name”.

“This situation is causing further trauma to the whānau and the terrorist should not be given the opportunity to retraumatise all of us as New Zealanders.”

(with agencies)

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