New Zealand Gives Christchurch Killer a Record Sentence

[Celerity]

While the grieving and wounded watched, Brenton Tarrant was hauled away to face the certainty of dying behind bars after killing 51 people at two mosques in the worst terrorist attack New Zealand has ever seen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/world/asia/christchurch-brenton-tarrant-sentenced.html



SYDNEY, Australia — Brenton Tarrant doctored triggers to make his weapons fire faster and be more lethal. He used a strobe light to disorient his victims. And after murdering 51 Muslims during Friday Prayer at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last year, he told the police he wished he had killed even more. On Thursday, his campaign of hate finally ended: A judge in the resilient seaside city where he had waged his terrorism sentenced him to life in prison without any chance of parole.

While the grieving and wounded watched with a mix of anger, defiance and relief, Mr. Tarrant, 29, an Australian with thinning hair and inscrutable eyes, was hauled away to face the certainty of dying behind bars. He is the first criminal in New Zealand ever sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for release — the country’s most severe punishment. “If he still has any human feeling, he will die in guilt and remorse,” said Gamal Fouda, the imam of Al Noor mosque, where Mr. Tarrant killed 44 people. “I think he will die out of loneliness, thinking about what he did to us and his mother, his grandmother, his family.”

“We are getting support,” he added. “He lost himself forever.” The sentence in New Zealand’s worst mass murder was handed down by Justice Cameron Mander to a courtroom of total silence after three intense days of heartbreaking and defiant testimony by victims. In all, 91 statements were delivered in court before a rotating group of socially distanced survivors and witnesses who also filled seven additional courtrooms in the modern High Court building in downtown Christchurch. Upon hearing there would be no possibility of parole, many smiled through tears.



The life sentence, while expected, followed more than a year of unpredictable proceedings. Mr. Tarrant initially pleaded not guilty to 51 charges of murder, 40 charges of attempted murder and one terrorism charge, then changed his plea to guilty in March. He fired his lawyers in July, raising concerns that he would use the sentencing to promote the racist views he had described in a manifesto he published online just before his attacks in March 2019. But instead, as victim after victim confronted him with anger and resolve, Mr. Tarrant sat silently, gazing without emotion at those he had tried to kill or terrorize.

snip

[misanthrope]

1. I guess he picked the wrong country

Had he been in the contemporary U.S., he would have had defenders all across right wing media and web sites. He might have even gotten to eat Big Macs with Mango Mussolini.