A New Zealand court official told AFP that Australian Brenton Tarrant, the perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch massacre that killed 51 Muslims, will appeal his life sentence.
Armed with an arsenal of semi-automatic rifles, white supremacist Tarrant attacked two mosques on March 9, 2019 during Muslim Friday prayers, before shooting and broadcasting his killings live on social media. All of his 51 victims were Muslims, including children, women and the elderly.
Tarrant pleaded guilty to 51 counts of murder and 40 counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the first time such a sentence had been handed down in New Zealand.
“An appeal has been filed against the guilty verdicts and sentences,” Liz Kennedy, spokeswoman for the Chief Justice, said in a statement.
During his August 2020 sentencing, Judge Cameron Mander said he would hand down the harshest sentence for Tarrant for his “inhumane” actions, adding: “Your crimes are so brutal and even if you were put in jail to die, it wouldn’t be enough, to exhaust the demands of punishment and condemnation.”
Following Tarrant’s 17-minute live stream of the execution at two mosques, Facebook announced that it had removed 1.5 million shocking videos circulating in the first 24 hours after the massacre.
Source: AFP