Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant’s chilling new look as Aussie terrorist makes shock move from behind bars
The Australian terrorist who killed 51 people in a mosque in New Zealand showed off a chilling new look as he appeared in court today to appeal his conviction.
Brenton Tarrant, now 35, opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch in March 2019, killing men, women and children and wounding dozens in what is considered one of the world’s worst mass shootings.
He pleaded guilty to dozens of charges in March 2020 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But he is now seeking to overturn that conviction, arguing that he only confessed to the crime ‘under pressure through torture’.
As Tarrant appeared before New Zealand’s Court of Appeal via video link from prison on Monday, he looked strikingly different from when he was last seen during his sentencing hearing in 2020.
He could be seen wearing a white collared shirt, black dark-rimmed glasses and a shaved head.
Tarrant, who wants his pleas withdrawn and his sentence reduced, will testify within the next five days about why he could not make rational decisions when he pleaded guilty.
He will also need to explain why he is delaying his appeal, which should have been lodged within 20 working days rather than the two years he waited to file documents in New Zealand.
Brenton Tarrant had a chilling new look when he appeared in court in New Zealand on Monday
Tarrant was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to horrific attack
The massacre at Al Noor Mosque (pictured) and Linwood Islamic Center were broadcast live
Tarrant claims that he only entered the guilty plea after ‘being held under illegal and torturous prison conditions, having required legal documents withheld from me, disagreements with previous lawyers, and the irrationality caused by the prison conditions’, as he stated in his first appeal in 2022.
‘This was a decision driven by circumstances rather than a decision I made rationally,’ he said.
‘The prison conditions were making me irrational and I was thinking: ‘Okay, this has nothing to do with changing beliefs, it’s the prison conditions that do it’.’
Tarrant claimed that the guards were playing “mind games” on him.
‘They kept saying they couldn’t hear me,’ he said. “They say, ‘We don’t know what you’re saying, we can’t understand it.'”
‘I’d yell and they’d say, ‘No, we still don’t get it.’
Tarrant told the court his lawyers were concerned about his mental health and told him he was ‘changing’ and ‘not talking the way you normally talk’.
‘They were quite concerned because I was different and different in appearance,’ he said.
He spoke via video from a room in the maximum security unit at Auckland Prison
New Zealand’s then prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, refused to mention the terrorist by name
Victims of the Christchurch attack: (top row, left to right) 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 Derviş, Arifbhai Vora, Sohail Shadid, Abdus Samad, Hussein al-Umari, Zeeshan Raza, Ali Elmadani, Zakaria Bhuiya; (fifth row, from left) Emjad Hamid, Mojammel Hoq, Ramiz Vora, Musa Vali Suleiman Patel, Munir 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 trial will be subject to strict lockdown orders, with the names of lawyers representing Tarrant completely suppressed due to security concerns.
Victims and their family members will be able to watch the hearing with delayed broadcast.
Aya al-Umari, who lost her older brother Hussein in the attack on the Al Noor mosque, is among those planning to watch the hearing.
“It’ll just be a picture I’m looking at because it means absolutely nothing to me at this stage,” he told the BBC.
‘I suspect one of his main motivations for doing this is to resurface traumas, and I won’t let him do that; he just wants to be in the spotlight and be relevant again.’
If three appeals court judges rule that Tarrant can withdraw his guilty plea, the case could potentially go to trial on all charges.
If the appeal bid is unsuccessful, another hearing to consider his sentence could be held later this year.
