White supremacist Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 Muslim worshipers in 2019 in New Zealand, remained unmoved on Monday when survivors and the prosecutor returned to the hearing over the long minutes of horror at two Christchurch mosques.
The trial of the 29-year-old Australian, who was convicted of 51 murders and 40 attempted murders and one count of terrorism, entered its home stretch on Monday. Christchurch court is expected to announce the sentence on Thursday.
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While the killer had attended by videoconference, in his high security prison in Auckland, the previous hearings, he was present in court on Monday. This was the first time he had been confronted with survivors and families since the attacks of March 15, 2019.
That day, Abdiaziz Ali Jama, a 44-year-old Somali refugee, saw her brother-in-law Muse Awale being killed in front of her eyes. " I see the images and I still hear the rata-rata-rata of the weapon in my head, " she told the court.
Chilling tale
Dressed in his gray inmate uniform, and flanked by three police officers in the cubicle, Brenton Tarrant remained silent and unmoved, occasionally raising his head to look at the audience. Prosecutor Barnaby Hawes gave a chilling account of the facts, explaining that the accused " would have wanted to kill more people ".
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He recounted how the Australian had that day methodically slaughtered women, children and men, while filming the killings and televising it live on social media, how he ignored pleas for pity from some victims, how he had run over a body while going from one mosque to another. When he saw a three-year-old clinging to his father's leg, the killer executed him " with two precisely placed bullets ," the prosecutor said.
Several lawyers believe that the Australian will be the first, in New Zealand, to be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Mr Tarrant, who had pleaded guilty, was arrested as he hoped to reach Ashburton, an hour south of Christchurch, to attack a third mosque there.
