An Australian terrorist who killed 51 people in a New Zealand mosque has debuted a chilling new look as he fronted court today in a bid to appeal his conviction.
Brenton Tarrant, now 35, opened fire on two mosques in Christchurch in March 2019, killing men, women and children, and leaving dozens injured, in what is considered as one of the world’s worst mass shootings.
In March 2020, he plead guilty to dozens of charges and was sentenced to life behind bars with no possibility of parole.
However, he is now seeking to overturn that conviction, arguing he only entered a guilty plea ‘under duress through torture.’
While fronting New Zealand’s Court of Appeal on Monday via video link from prison, Tarrant appeared strikingly different from when he was last seen in 2020 during his sentencing hearing.
He could be seen wearing a white collared shirt, black dark-rimmed glasses and a shaved head.
Tarrant, who is seeking to have his pleas vacated and his sentence reduced, is set to give evidence over the next five days as to why he was incapable of making rational decisions at the time he pleaded guilty.
He will also need to explain why he delayed his appeal application, which must be made within 20 working days in New Zealand – not the two years he waited to file the documents.
Brenton Tarrant had a chilling new look when he fronted a New Zealand court on Monday
Tarrant was sentenced to life behind bars after pleading guilty to the horrific attack
The massacre at Al Noor mosque (pictured) and the Linwood Islamic Centre was live streamed
As stated in his original appeal application from 2022, Tarrant alleges he only entered a guilty plea after he was ‘held under illegal and torturous prison conditions, necessary legal documents withheld from myself, fallout with previous lawyers, irrationality brought on through prison conditions’.
‘It was a decision induced by the conditions, rather than a decision I rationally made,’ he said.
‘The prison conditions were making me irrational and I was like, “Okay, it’s nothing to do with changing beliefs, it’s the prison conditions that are doing this”.’
Tarrant claimed prison guards had played ‘mental games’ with him.
‘They kept saying they couldn’t hear me,’ he said. ‘They would say, “We don’t know what you’re saying, we can’t understand”.’
‘I would yell and they would say, “No we still don’t get it”.’
Tarrant told the court his lawyers had shown concern for his mental wellbeing and told him that he had ‘changed’ and not ‘speaking the way you normally do’.
‘They were quite concerned because I was different, and different in look,’ he said.
He spoke on video from a room inside a maximum security unit at Auckland Prison
New Zealand’s then-prime minister Jacinda Ardern refused to refer to the terrorist by his name
The victims of the Christchurch attack: (top row, from left) Mohamed Moosid Mohamedhosen, Lilik Abdul Hamid, Ansi Alibava, Maheboob Khokar, Syed Jahandad Ali, Hamza Mustafa, Osama Adnan, Areeb Ahmed; (second row, from left) Haroon Mahmood, Mohammad Atta Elayyan, Khaled Mustafa, Sayyad Milne, Haji Daoud Nabi, Farhaj Ahsan, Linda Armstrong, Ashraf Ali; (third row, from left) Abdulfatteh Qasem, Mucad Ibrahim, Mohammed Omar Faruk, Husne Ara Parvin, Ozair Kadir, Naeem Rashid and his son Talha Naeem, Tariq Omar, Musa Nur Awale; (fourth row, from left) Kamel Darwish, Arifbhai Vora, Sohail Shadid, Abdus Samad, Hussein al-Umari, Zeeshan Raza, Ali Elmadani, Zakaria Bhuiya; (fifth row, from left) Amjad Hamid, Mojammel Hoq, Ramiz Vora, Musa Vali Suleman Patel, Mounir Suleiman, Junaid Ismail, Ghulam Hussain, Karam Bibi, (bottom row, from left) Matiullah Safi, Muhammad Haziq Mohd-Tarmizi, Hussein Moustafa, Mohammed Imran Khan, Mohsen Mohammed Al Harbi, Ahmed Abdel Ghani, Zekeriya Tuyan and Abdukadir Elmi. Not pictured: Ashraf Morsi, Ashraf al-Masri
The hearing is subject to strict suppression orders, with the names of the lawyers representing Tarrant fully suppressed over concerns for their safety.
Victims and family members will be able to watch the hearing via a delayed broadcast.
Aya al-Umari, who lost her older brother Hussein in the attack on Al Noor mosque, is among those planning to watch the hearing.
‘It will be just an image that I am looking at, because he means absolutely nothing to me at this stage,’ she told the BBC.
‘I suspect one of his main motivations to do this is to open up traumas again and I won’t let him succeed in doing that – he just wants his limelight and to be relevant again.’
If the three appeal court judges decide Tarrant can withdraw his guilty plea, the case could potentially go to trial on all charges.
If his appeal bid fails, there could be another hearing later this year to consider his sentence.
