Former Grafton man terrorism trial date set for May 2020

The Daily Examiner, 15 June 2019, p.1:

The Australian man accused of the Christchurch mosque killings smiled as survivors of the shooting were told he would be pleading not guilty to 51 charges of murder and 40 of attempted murder.

Brenton Tarrant, 28, pleaded not guilty to all charges yesterday morning when he faced New Zealand’s High Court by video link. It means he will stand trial in May next year over the attack.

Dozens of survivors and family members of the victims packed the court to hear whether the man accused of the shootings would defend himself.

Some were visibly nervous during the hearing. Others were in tears. They reacted in shock when the not guilty pleas were made.

Two further courts and some 200 seats were set aside for the public, with police maintaining a heavy presence through the building.

Tarrant is facing a terror charge, 51 counts of murder and 40 of attempted murder over the March 15 attacks on worshippers at two mosques.

Tarrant was not in the courtroom but was shown via video from Paremoremo Prison in Auckland wearing a grey sweatshirt.

This is the accused’s first hearing since early April.

The terror charge against Tarrant, laid last month, is the first in New Zealand and legal experts say it could potentially lead to a complex trial.

But Christchurch’s Muslim community has welcomed the decision by prosecutors to acknowledge the attacks as an act of terrorism.

Tarrant was remanded in custody to face a review hearing on August 16.

He is being held in New Zealand’s only maximum security jail and prison staff say he has no access to television, radio, newspapers or visitors.

The courts last week dropped a ban on local media publishing pictures of the former Grafton resident’s face.

At Tarrant’s last appearance, the court ordered he undertake a mental health assessment to see if he was fit to stand trial.

A trial date has been set for May 4 [2020] which was confirmed by Justice Cameron Mander…..

Far-right white supremacy is not about to crash & burn in Australia - instead it reached peak extremism on 15 March 2019

How homegrown white supremacist groups reportedly influenced the Australian terrorist who allegedly killed fifty worshippers in two New Zealand mosques on 15 March 2019.........

ABC News, 23 March 2019:

Three years before the mass shooting in Christchurch, [name redacted] was lavishing praise on prominent Australian far-right nationalist Blair Cottrell, referring to him as "Emperor".

The ABC's Background Briefing has uncovered an archive of comments from the accused mosque shooter, which were posted on the now deleted Facebook pages of Australian far-right groups United Patriots Front (UPF) and True Blue Crew (TBC).

The comments give an insight for the first time into [name redacted]'s early radical views.

[name redacted], 28, is facing trial in New Zealand for his alleged involvement in the shooting deaths of 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch last week— part of which was live streamed on his Facebook page.

At this stage, [name redacted] has been charged with one count of murder.

But in the wake of the massacre, his social media accounts were wiped from the internet, leaving very little information regarding the connections he made with individuals and groups on the far-right that operate prominently online.

What remained were fragments and digital impressions of a well-travelled young man who frequented hate-filled anonymous messaging boards and was deeply engaged in a global alt-right culture.

Although the shooter claimed in a manifesto uploaded before the attack that he was never a member of any group, the archive verified by Background Briefing reveals an allegiance to a number of high-profile Australian far-right figures.

And while specific details remain murky, these revelations about [name redacted]'s interactions with domestic far-right groups shed light on a young man captivated by white nationalism and its high-profile figurehead, Mr Cottrell.

Mr Cottrell emerged as a public figure in 2015 for his opposition to a mosque in Victoria and a graphic stunt in which he performed a mock beheading.

Since then he has become the highest profile leader of Australia's alt right.

For many he is the symbol of the so-called "white resistance" in Australia and is the figurehead for a movement that in recent times has been defined by its virulent anti-Islamic views.

Before the Facebook page of his group, the UPF, was deleted, it had more than 120,000 followers, and the data reveals [name redacted] also followed the group.

[name redacted]'s comments, dating back as early as April 2016, showed the Australian-born man was a vocal supporter of then UPF-leader Mr Cottrell.

In the information, [name redacted] made more than 30 comments on the UPF and TBC pages over a 10-month period.

Although there are no screenshots of his comments on the UPF and TBC pages, Background Briefing has verified their authenticity by comparing the archive's preserved metadata — including Facebook ID numbers and timestamps — against other public posts shared by UPF and TBC supporters.

This allowed us to connect names to comments.

In one instance, metadata shows that when members from the UPF violently clashed with counter-protesters in Coburg in 2016, [name redacted] felt compelled to respond to Mr Cottrell's critics online.

"Communists will get what communists get, I would love to be there holding one end of the rope when you get yours traitor," [name redacted] posted….

In the video, Mr Cottrell and Mr Sewell are seen wearing neat collared shirts and grinning ear-to-ear as they described Mr Trump's victory, declaring it as the end to political correctness and "Marxism" in the US.

[name redacted] was online celebrating with Mr Cottrell and Mr Sewell.

"Simply one of the most important events in modern history," [name redacted] commented on the live video.

It was here that  [name redacted]was most effusive in his support of Mr Cottrell and the movement.

"Globalists and Marxists on suicide watch, patriots and nationalists triumphant — looking forward to Emperor Blair Cottrell coming soon," he wrote.

[name redacted] made similar comments months earlier, when Mr Cottrell appeared on national TV.

"Knocked it out of the park tonight Blair," he wrote.

"Your retorts had me smiling, nodding, cheering and often laughing.

"Never believed we would have a true leader of the nationalist movement in Australia, and especially not so early in the game.

"Would gladly stand behind you."

[name redacted]'s comments in the same period also demonstrate he was invested in the rivalry between the country's far-right groups.

He directed anger at one of the UPF founders, Neil Erikson, and former UPF leader Shermon Burgess and called them "useful idiots".

"Leave the nationalist leadership to Blair and the TBC, or be named obvious plants and traitors," [name redacted] wrote in July 2016 on the TBC Facebook page.

Those comments and their metadata were archived in text form by an anonymous source when those pages were still active on Facebook.

As far as we know the ABC is the only media outlet with access to the archives.

The last activity we have from [name redacted] on the UPF Facebook page is from January 2017, in response to a post discussing Mr Cottrell's impending appearance in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court over staging a fake beheading in Bendigo two years earlier.

[name redacted] was one of more than 200 people who commented on this thread in support of Mr Cottrell.

Mr Cottrell and two other former UPF members were found guilty of inciting serious contempt of Muslims in September 2017.....

....a donation had been made to UPF in [name redacted]'s name some years earlier.....

Michael Edison Hayden is a senior investigator on white supremacists' digital strategies for the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), a non-profit which is tracking hate crimes across the US and the world.

He said the Christchurch shooting was a "new reality" where the views and statements of the extreme far-right were having a profound reach on young disaffected men.

He said the accused shooter's manifesto and social media strategy was more "self-aware and performative" than anything he had seen.

"It's a signifier he was immersed in this culture of radicalisation, that he is speaking to them and he is responding to what he's seen from them and what he wants them to see," Mr Hayden said.

Mr Hayden said race-related killings from far-right personalities around the world were often based on fears about being replaced by immigrants and having their white identity erased.

"Once you get the idea you're being eliminated, once you integrate that into your everyday way of thinking, they feel like violence is being inflicted against them day in and day out," he said.

"Which is, of course, a complete perversion of the truth."

 All this raises the question ; How many other men living on the NSW North Coast and elsewhere in Australia share [name redacted]'s world view?

Police hunt for information in Lawrence and Sandy Beach about alleged perpetrator of NZ terrorist attack

The New Daily, 18 March 2019:

Family members of the Australian man charged with murdering Muslim worshippers at two mosques in New Zealand are devastated one of their own could be involved in a massacre.

Brenton Tarrant’s grandmother, Marie Fitzgerald, said the family was gobsmacked he’d been charged over Friday’s shooting attacks on mosques in Christchurch.

“It’s just so much of everything to take in that somebody in our family would do anything like this,” the 81-year-old woman told Nine News in the NSW city of Grafton on Sunday.

“The media is saying he has planned it for a long time so he is obviously not of sound mind.”

Tarrant went to Europe after his father died of cancer in 2010 and came back a different man, Mrs Fitzgerald said.

“It’s only since he travelled overseas I think, that that boy has changed completely to the boy we knew,” she said.

His uncle Terry Fitzgerald apologised on behalf of the family for his nephew’s alleged murderous act.

“We are so sorry for the families over there, for the dead and the injured,” Terry Fitzgerald said.

“What he has done is just not right.”

Tarrant spent most of his time on computer games during his high school days, rather than chasing girls, his grandmother added.

The family had dinner with Tarrant in Grafton a year ago for his sister’s birthday.

His sister and mother have been put under police protection after Friday’s attack, which has left 50 dead and others in a critical condition on hospital.

Meanwhile, counter-terrorism police raided two homes on the NSW mid-north coast on Monday as part of investigations into the shootings.

Officers from the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team searched a property in Sandy Beach, near Coffs Harbour, about 8.30am on Monday, before storming a second house at Lawrence, near Maclean.

“The primary aim of the activity is to formally obtain material that may assist New Zealand Police in their ongoing investigation,” the Australian Federal Police and NSW Police said in a joint statement.

“The community can be assured that there is no information to suggest a current or impending threat related to this search warrants.”

Tarrant was not on any watchlist in Australia or New Zealand, despite online profiles linked to him containing white supremacist material.

The 28-year-old posted a 74-page document online before the attack. A 17-minute video of the shootings was also live-streamed.

The JCTT is made up of officers from the AFP, NSW Police, as well as ASIO and the NSW Crime Commission.

–AAP

Australia's paranoid, xenophobic, racist, bigoted, rage-filled and profoundly ignorant underbelly exposed in an horrific white supremacist terrorist attack on two New Zealand mosques

Australian-born and raised Brenton Harrison Tarrant aged 28 years who is alleged to have murdered forty-eight fifty worshippers during a white supremacist terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on Friday 15 March 2019, appeared in Christchurch District Court on 16 March.

Note the right-handed US-style 'white power' sign being made by the prisoner 
Image: Al Jazeera