New Zealand mosque shooter tells court mental health forced him to plead guilty
By Renju Jose
February 9 (Reuters) – The white supremacist who killed 51 Muslim worshipers at two New Zealand mosques seven years ago said on Monday he was unreasonable in pleading guilty in a New Zealand court as he sought to overturn his conviction, local media reported.
Appearing in court via video link in Wellington, Brenton Tarrant, 35, is trying to confess his guilt.
Tarrant, an Australian citizen, committed the deadliest mass shooting in New Zealand history by opening fire at two mosques in Christchurch during Friday prayers in March 2019. Shortly before the attack, he published a racist manifesto in which he used military-style semi-automatic weapons and live-streamed the killings on Facebook via a head-mounted camera.
Tarrant initially denied all charges and was preparing to go to trial following the attack, but a year later he pleaded guilty to 51 charges of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and one count of committing an act of terrorism.
According to a report in the New Zealand Herald newspaper, Tarrant told the court that harsh prison conditions had impaired his mental health while awaiting trial and that he was essentially unfit to plead guilty.
“I didn’t have the mental makeup or mental health to make informed decisions at the time,” Tarrant said.
“I guess the question is, did I really know what I wanted to do, or did I know what would be a good idea? No, actually I didn’t… I was making choices, but they weren’t choices made voluntarily, and they weren’t choices made rationally because of the (prison) conditions.”
The names and identities of the lawyers working on behalf of Tarrant were concealed by court order and they could not be reached for comment.
A court document showed the Court of Appeal would check whether Tarrant had the ability to make rational decisions in pleading guilty “as a result of imprisonment conditions which he said were torturous and inhumane”.
He is serving a life sentence without parole; For the first time, a New Zealand court has imposed a sentence requiring a person to spend the rest of his life in prison.
The appeal hearing is scheduled to last five days and is expected to wrap up on Friday.
If the appeals court rejects the application to annul the criminal complaint, his appeal regarding his sentence will be considered at a hearing to be held later in the year. If the appeal is accepted, the case will be sent back to the Supreme Court for Tarrant to be tried on the charges.
(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
