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Maeve Korengold writes about the recent trial of white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, who committed mass murder at a mosque in New Zealand last year. In an unprecedented move, the convicted terrorist has been sentenced to life in prison without parole. The shooting left over fifty people dead, several injured, and others traumatised for life. The trial has given survivors and victims' families the opportunity to address the attacker, and to describe the hardships they have endured.
Islamophobia has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. In 2017, anti-Muslim hate crimes increased by seventy-four percent, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In the United Kingdom, a report by Tell MAMA confirmed that, in 2017, anti-Muslim hate crimes increased by thirty percent, compared to the year prior.
On March fifteenth, 2019, Brenton Tarrant, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, shot and killed fifty-one Muslims as they worshipped at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The twenty-nine-year-old pleaded guilty to fifty-one charges of murder, forty charges of attempted murder, and one charge of committing a terrorist act. According to the New York Times, Tarrant first pleaded not guilty to his charges, but switched his plea to guilty in March of 2020 - a year after the shooting. On the twenty-seventh of August, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole: the first sentence of its kind to be given in New Zealand.
An article by Reuters confirmed that Tarrant had used social media to advertise his plans, and that these platforms responded shortly after the attack occurred. He live-streamed the attack on one of the two mosques on Facebook, and was active on Twitter. He tweeted pictures of the rifle he had used to murder over fifty people. The weapon was covered in the names of other people who had committed race or religion-based attacks; the gun also had the number fourteen on it, which is a reference to white supremacist messaging.
Tarrant was also active on the “/pol/-Politically Incorrect” server on 8chan, which is a site that is widely known for not filtering its content, including hate speech. On the day of the attack, he posted a seventy-four-page long manifesto onto the site, saying “I will carry out an attack against the invaders, and will even livestream the attack via Facebook”. He posted this around 1:30 PM and carried out the attack at 1:40.
According to the BBC, Tarrant’s goal was to murder as many people as possible. He researched different mosques in New Zealand, and, in order to attack when the mosques were busiest, he looked at the floor plans of mosques and their locations in relation to each other. He had initially meant to target the Ashburton Mosque in addition to the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Center, but was stopped by police on the way.
After he was arrested, Tarrant informed the police that he had intended to burn down the mosques after the shooting and that he wished he had been able to.
Shortly after the shooting, Tarrant’s Twitter and Facebook accounts were suspended.
Facebook tweeted that after they were notified by police of the live-streamed video, they removed Tarrant’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, along with the video of the shooting.
According to Reuters, Twitter assured users that the company would work with law enforcement as they investigated, and that they now have a team equipped to take care of situations like the mosque shootings. .
During Tarrant’s trial, it was reported that he sat without emotion, while looking directly at survivors of the shooting and deceased victim’s family members. As he stared, they spoke about how his attack had affected their lives. Many of the ninety-one victims who made statements mentioned the injuries they suffered, the daily mental and emotional hardship they endured, and their traumatic memories. Some who were affected by Tarrant’s attack expressed anger, with one giving him the middle finger.
"My body went completely weak and everything went silent," said Rashid Omar during the trial, whose twenty-four-year-old son Tariq was murdered. "As a parent, no matter how old your children are, they'll always be your baby." His wife, Rosemary, said: "It's like I'm broken, and I see my family as broken," she said. They described the consequent grief as “debilitating.”
"Your crimes are so wicked that even if you are detained until you die it will not exhaust the requirements of punishment and denunciation," said High Court Judge Cameron Mander as he delivered Tarrant’s sentence, as reported by Al Jazeera. “The hatred that lies at the heart of your hostility to particular members of the community that you came to this country to murder has no place here - it has no place anywhere."
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