BONUS | Unveiling the motives behind the Christchurch terrorist’s appeal

A Listener Production Hello Secretsweak Keep Uncovered Listeners. This is Sasha Barbergatt from The Briefing, and there are new developments in the case of the Christchurch Terrorist, the Australian man who murdered 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019, who is now seeking to overturn his guilty plea and appeal his sentence. The Christchurch massacre remains the deadliest act of extremist violence committed by an Australian. Investigative journalist and regular Secretsweak Keep host Joey Watson trace the terrorist journey from his beginnings in the New South Wales country town of Grafton to the other side of the world where he was radicalised for his podcast Secretsweak Keep Lone Acta. I spoke to Joey to explore what the terrorist true motives may be with this legal manoeuvre. Horrific scenes in a normally peaceful country. Shooting attacks on two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch. Witnesses say at least one gun, an open fire on worshippers at the mosques as they were gathering for Friday prayers. Police are investigating reports that an attacker livestreamed their actions. This is one of New Zealand's darkest days. On the 15th of March 2019, Australian man Brenton Tarant carried out the worst mass shooting in New Zealand's history, opening fire on worshippers gathering for Friday prayers at two mosques in Christchurch. The brutal attack was livestreamed on Facebook and sent shockwaves right across the world. It is clear that this can now only be described as a terrorist attack. 51 people were killed and another 89 were injured. In 2020, Tarant pleaded guilty to charges of murder, attempted murder and terrorism, and he became the first person to be handed a life sentence without parole in New Zealand. Those impacted by the attack thought the ordeal was over and they could move towards healing. But this week, a Wellington court has been hearing a formal request from the Christchurch terrorist to have his guilty pleas vacated, which could trigger a retrial. Could he be successful and what would the impacts of that be on the victim's families and the survivors of the terror attack? Joey, you followed Tarant closely for years. Were you surprised at his recent bid to vacate his guilty plea? So after he had carried out the attack where he livestreamed himself killing 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, his original plea was not guilty. That's what he'd submitted to the court at the time. And there was a lot of thinking, which I think as we look back at it now, is very accurate. The reason he'd done that is because he wanted to use the trial as a propaganda tool. This was following in the footsteps of people that he was inspired by like a under-served curbing terrorist who'd killed upwards of 70 people in Oslo, Norway in 2011. The real surprise came when about a year after that, almost a year after he was originally arrested after the attack, he actually changed that not guilty plea to guilty reports at the time suggesting that it was after conversations he'd had with his sister, which meant that a protracted trial that many people were expecting ended up not eventuating. And he was given 51 life sentences plus terror charges, plus charges for attempted murder as well. That was the surprise. Since then, we haven't actually heard heaps of him. I think that's largely a really good thing. He shouldn't have agency in any way given what he carried out and what he wanted to achieve by carrying it out. So I suppose there is an element of surprise in that all of a sudden, what we are six odd years later, he's piped up again and wanting to change that plea. What do you think has motivated this recent quest for freedom given what you know about him? What's motivated this quest, which is I think very similar to what motivated him originally to plead not guilty at the time. So an important thing to understand about what happened in Christchurch is many people came to see it as a sort of random tragedy. What I found is that by looking at the communities that he'd occupied in the years before the attack, this was actually a very deliberate thing that he carried out. It was a propaganda piece. It was designed to be repeated. It was an aspirational act of terrorism. And very specifically, I tied him to a network of websites and real world groups that sort of came to be known by researchers at the Skull Mask Terror Network. These were neo-Nazi terror groups that existed in Europe, the US and even in Australia that all were sort of linked by a Skull Mask aesthetic. And within those groups was a sort of worship culture around Anders Bravik, the far-right terrorist from Norway from 2011, who had written a dire tribe of a manifesto thousands of pages long, including a whole bunch of instructions for firstly how to carry out an attack, how to remain undetected by authorities, loose instructions for how to create and provide explosive material, stuff like that. But then also instructions for how to do propaganda. And one of the things he detailed was doing a kind of legal warfare after the attack, which means using the court system to repeatedly appeal or to get the attention of the court in any way whatsoever. Firstly, in the initial trial, so plead not guilty, use that trial to spread your propaganda, use the platform, and then subsequently again to appeal on any grounds that you can. So in his case, because he fled not guilty, Bravik has been appealing exactly as the Christchurch terrorist is now, appealing his treatment in prison. And in those trials in Norway, he continues to get up and spread propaganda, even mentioning the Christchurch terrorist, creating a kind of link there. And I believe whatever reason now, six years later, the Christchurch terrorist is now deciding to do the same thing. So once again, things in this story that look random are actually, I think, direct responses to the triggers and the ideals and the precedents that are set up within this very scary ecosystem of thyroid extremist terrorists. Yeah, wow. He is claiming in this court process at the moment that's happening this week that the harsh conditions of his confinement were equated to torture essentially and that it affected his ability to make a rational decision. And that is what led him to plead guilty at the time. Can you shed any more light on like the conditions that he is facing in prison? He's in a sort of purposeful facility within all-comprison from what I understand. I didn't look into that ridiculously closely when I was doing this story because as far as I'm concerned, he no longer has any agency. I also feel like him doing this at this point in time is a very deliberate trigger to try and make himself look like a victim. One important moment that happened here that sort of cut him off from the outside world, which sort of went under the radar is sometime in late 2020, he had managed to write a letter to a user on the website for Chan and that had been published on the internet. That was a big scandal at the time in New Zealand and after that his contact with the outside world had been restricted further. That was largely his own doing. So I think that because this is a very clear deliberate propaganda ploy from him, I think like whether or not it's the time to discuss what his conditions are in prison or what people have done, the worst possible offences what they endure in prison. That might be a story for another time. You spoke to victim, families, survivors of his attack. How do you think this bid for his freedom would be impacting them? I had sort of brief correspondence this week just really to wish them well for what I know will be an extremely hard week. The Muslim community in Christchurch in New Zealand as a whole is very small and there's no overemphasizing how profoundly this event had impacted them and how deeply traumatizing it was. There's no one that doesn't have a link to a survivor or someone who was killed that day in the Moscow or to families of those victims. For this to happen while people almost seemingly randomly six years later to have it back in the news, to have him back in court, to have people talking about him again. There's no underestimating how profoundly difficult that would be. Of course, they are always at the center of this story and all reporting around it. So they should be. Yeah. It's been interesting to watch how tightly controlled the court proceedings have been this week. They're only broadcasting or making public certain aspects of Tarantz testimony. Only one Australian media outlet has been permitted to enter the courtroom. Is this echo what we saw initially with the response? I remember as well at the time they weren't saying his name and just into our turn who was the prime minister at the time said we will not add his name. How important do you think that has been for the healing journeys of the families of the people who were killed and also survivors that authorities are taking this very seriously? They're trying not to give him that platform like you've talked about. Absolutely. It's always an extremely delicate balance and it's almost impossible to get right, but the decision of the court to basically restrict access is a direct response to the fear that he is using this to spread propaganda. And therefore I think that this is absolutely the right decision because that's unquestionably what he's doing. It is a way of saying that. always very, very tricky to get right how you balance the priorities of fair process, fair trial, in democratic countries, in these very specific terrorism cases where extraordinary acts of violence are being used to further ideology. But yes, to restrict media is certainly something that I think going back to the under-spray-vict, the inspirational, under-spray-vict example, inspirational for the Christchurch terrorist. I mean, I should emphasize, it is something that they've slowly learned over time. It's important to understand that this is a propaganda play. This isn't really about his prison conditions by any means whatsoever. Taren was the first man to ever be given a life without parole sentence in New Zealand. How important was that for victims and their families? And what would it mean if he did end up with a reduced sentence? I think that that was absolutely the only option, the only outcome that could have come out of something so unimaginable. I mean, not only for New Zealanders, but also for Australians, this was the worst mass killing, the worst terrorist attack by far ever carried out by an Australian, 51 people and dozens more shot and injured on the day. So I think that that day and the fact that he had eventually pled guilty was a great relief to many, many people in the community. And I just hope that this doesn't disturb their healing process too much and their road to recovery, which is unquestionably a decades-long process for the community. Joey Watson, thanks so much for joining us on the briefing. Before we let you go, plug your podcast deep diving into way more detail this man and what he did. How can we find it? Yeah, so Secrets We Keep, Lone Actor. You can find that wherever you get your podcast, just look up Secrets We Keep. Yeah, it's a sort of multi-year journey into the various communities that radicalise them. He, the Christchurch terrorist, is no longer an agent, is no longer a player, but unfortunately the communities around him, even though they morphed and evolved in the years since they still are. And I think for that reason, it's important to understand them and remain vigilant. Thanks Joey. Thanks Ash. That was Listeners investigative journalist Joey Watson speaking with me there. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm Sasha Barbergatt. See you next time.