00.00.27
DR GREGORY JENKS,
ANGLICAN DEAN, GRAFTON: Grafton is a monochrome, traditional, beautiful little
country town. We now have forever, probably, the distinction of you know having
given the world a man who's turned out to be Australia's worst mass murderer at this point in time.
00.00.47
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
Ten days ago, Christchurch, New Zealand experienced an act of terror like none
before.
During Friday prayers,
fifty Muslims at two separate mosques were shot dead, another fifty injured.
00.01.08
HISHAM EL ZEINY: People
you know, dead, people who were alive 5 minutes ago, just praying. They have
done nothing. They have done nothing.
00.01.28
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: It was an attack calculated for the social media age,
intricately planned, filmed and streamed live online for a global audience.
00.01.41
PROF. PAUL SPOONLEY,
RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM RESEARCHER : My feeling is that
he chose New Zealand because it was a soft target in terms of security and
perhaps he chose it to make a point, to illustrate that even a relatively
tolerant quiet society on the very edge of the world was not immune to
terrorism.
00.02.04
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
The attack has exposed deep flaws in the counter-terrorism strategies of
Western nations like New Zealand and Australia.
00.02.14
ROBERT EVANS, BELLINGCAT
ONLINE EXTREMISM INVESTIGATOR: Authorities have absolutely failed to understand
and grasp the threat of far-right extremism . The
Christchurch shooter should absolutely not have fallen
under the radar and the fact that he did is evidence of a massive failing in
global counter terrorism strategies.
00.02.33
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: Tonight on 4 Corners, we investigate the rise of
right-wing extremism. And ask - how did the killer fly under the radar....even after posting clues in plain sight?
STORY TITLE: 'Under the
Radar'
REPORTER: Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop
00.03.10
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
It was lunchtime in Hagley Park, central Christchurch.
On Fridays the city's
tiny Muslim community comes together at the mosque on Deans Avenue.
00.03.24
KATH JAMIESON : Friday prayers time here is a really
busy time. There's people everywhere, cars everywhere.
It's really alive. Particularly around lunch time,
when people are coming and going, and you know the mosque has been part of this
community forever really. It's been here as long as
all of our houses around here and they're part of our community they're New
Zealanders. They're welcome here.
00.03.57
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: Former Imam, Hisham El Zeiny
arrived early for Friday prayers
00.04.05
HISHAM EL ZEINY: As usual I went inside the mosque and sat in my usual place I
usually sit in a particular certain place every time
on Friday, which is left hand side, front of the mosque, the extreme left-hand
side.
00.04.19
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: Parangit Singh and his wife Charu were at home a few doors down from the mosque.
00.04.25
CHARU SHARMA
: Actually my son goes for his kindy at So, I
just packed him up, gave to my husband, okay, said
goodbyes, I just came out to check the letterbox, some letters are there, some
things are there, because I was expecting a courier from India. So when I came here, I just, like this, I saw somebody
moving around.
00.04.54
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: A man with a military style semi-automatic rifle was
walking towards the mosque.
00.05.04
HISHAM EL ZEINY: We heard fire, shotguns. And at the beginning I thought this
was somebody shooting from the street who is going to come inside to scare us
off. There was a burst of fire and then brief silence, then another burst.
Silence, then two or three bursts, each one about 15 shots. And it was getting
closer. The entrance of the mosque is a small hall which is about five, six
meters long, and then it goes into the main prayer hall. So
people in that day, because the mosque was full, are sitting on the floor in
that hall on that corridor and he was killing them. But the fire was coming
closer and closer and you can see the sparkle of the fire coming when he's
shooting, you can see this glow comes out. So he went
back out to the main street, shot some people there, came back to the mosque,
point blanking people, then went out, got t another gun going back to the
mosque, taking his time all the way as if he knew the police weren't coming.
There was no rush at all in what he did.
00.06.15
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: Yasir Amin and his father arrived late for
prayers
00.06.21
YASIR AMIN: We were walking down to the mosque and on the way, I heard a
gunshot. After the gunshot, I saw a guy who was climbing the wall, so
definitely he was running away from the shooting. I saw him shooting the other
guy who was climbing the wall, so definitely in my mind it was like he might
shoot us as well, so we have to avoid that shooting.
That's why I told my dad to run away because that shooting going on, we need to
run away
So, we ran to other direction, and while he stopped there and with his gun, he
started shooting on us and I was a couple of steps ahead of my father, so
while, during the shooting, I stopped because ... I stand down and I stopped to
tell my father, "Please lay down." When I turned back, he was lying down so I thought maybe he heard my voice. At the same time,
the shooter, he drove away the car. I realized when I'd gone back to my dad and
there he lies, so there's a blood around his body. He got a couple of bullets.
00.07.54
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: At first nearby residents were oblivious to what had
happened.
00.08.00
KATH JAMIESON
: I just nipped out to the shops for a short time and came back down
Deans Avenue about nine minutes after the shooting started and tried to get in
from this lane down here, and people saying, "No, no, don't go down there,
there's been a shooting." I went right around Hagley Park, and as we're
coming past the hospital, there were police everywhere with guns running
around, ambulances we could hear.
00.08.32
By the time we got up to
the end of Deans Avenue, the were some ambulances there. There were people covered
in blood. There were people out who'd come screaming out of the mosque, who
were just so shocked. Devastated people crying. I asked one young man what had
happened. He said, "There's been a shooting, I was in the mosque." He
said, "There are people dead everywhere." I was just shocked,
horrified, and I just held his arm and said, "We're with you. Whatever
happens, we're with you."
00.09.04
PARANGIT SINGH: I see
that everyone is running on this way, and one body's
on the footpath, and one couple who is standing down here, she's a pregnant
lady, I think five or six months. And we just take a water jar from our house
and give both of them water and start helping them to
other people to give some water, because they are very ... not able to talk
anyone. But I just realized to help them.
00.09.31
CHARU SHARMA
: Then we brought them inside and they were ... everything, they had
bruises on them. They survived. A man was bleeding. He helped him out. Wiped
his wounds and gave him a Band-aid. We left our house to lead them to their own
places. And we just gave them first aid, everything we can do.
00.09.55
KATH JAMIESON: That's when we saw the car that was just down there, and the
people that were in that car had been going to the mosque, and the guy started
shooting at them. The gunmen, and the cars riddled with bullets and all the
windows are blown out. They'd backed up the car in a hurry into our lane here.
There was a guy out there dead, just lying there in his socks. He had obviously
tried to run away from the gunman and probably was coming through here to
escape and gunned down, just lying there, dead. Just at the front of the lane
there. Just shocking, absolutely shocking.
00.10.39
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP : When the police asked you to
come out, what did you see?
00.10.45
HISHAM EL ZEINY : They asked us to stand up, hold our hands and follow
him in line. So we followed him in line, and as we were going outside, they
were leading us outside the mosque, we found dead bodies on the ground, people
we knew lying on the ground dead . People you know,
dead. People who are alive five minutes ago, just praying, have done nothing.
They have done nothing. This hatred has no place among human beings, shouldn't,
shouldn't.
00.11.35
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
As the extent of the carnage became apparent, police responded to reports of
another attack at a second mosque 5 kilometres away.
A fleet of ambulances rushed the injured to hospital
00.11.51
As night fell, Haroon Feroz arrived to visit his
uncle who had been shot .
00.11.57
HAROON FEROZ : He tried
to hide like on the corner by the door and there were like two, three dead
bodies just dropped on top of him and he was like, just there and then there
was like blood all over him so he just pretended that he's also dead until the
guy like reloaded the magazine and then came for the second round. And then
when he actually came for the second round, that's
when he got shot twice. One just kissed him on the hip and then the second one
actually went on his back and at that point he lost consciousness and he was
like a lot of pain, but he stood still, and he just tried to just get through
that moment, you know, which was the most terrifying moment anyone can ever
imagine. Very, very terrifying.
00.12.37
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP
So, he hid under the bodies?
HAROON FEROZ
: Under the bodies, from what I understood, just to protect himself
because they were dead already, they were like completely, they were shot
multiple times.
00.12.55
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: Police arrested 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant
36 minutes after the shootings began.
00.13.14
Judge: Brenton Harrison
Tarrant
00.13.17
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP : The next day he appeared in Court charged with
murder.
00.13.22
Mr Tarrant you are remanded without plea , next
appearance will be in the Christchurch High Court on 5 April 2019 at 9.15 am,
I've noted that you're not making an application to be admitted to bail. I've
also noted that you're not making any application for suppression of
publication of your name or of any particular that could lead to your identification .
Court officer: As your
Honour pleases, stand down in custody.
00.14.10
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
Police investigations led to a modest home on a quiet street in the small city
of Dunedin, south of Christchurch.
Tarrant lived here
virtually unnoticed in the 18 months before his arrest.
Tarrant's house is now at
the centre of the biggest police investigation in New Zealand's history.
The question confronting
police and intelligence agencies is how did he manage to fly completely under
the radar while planning a mass murder?
And have the authorities
been so focused on Islamic extremism, that they've under estimated another
deadly threat, the rise of white supremacists around the world?
00.15.03
In Australia, police are focussing on northern New South Wales including
Grafton where Brenton Tarrant grew up.
Singing church hymn
00.15.37
CHURCH SERVICE: I like
you are absolutely shocked this could happen on our doorstep, but it has, and
the ramifications have spilled over into the broader community of Grafton and
honestly friends our hearts are truly broken
00.15.57
DR GREG JENKS, ANGLICAN
DEAN, GRAFTON: Grafton is a small but very traditional country town. It's very
much a homogenous, Anglo culture. It's unusual to see a person at the shopping
centre who's not Anglo. If the town is very homogenous, then you're not used to
seeing anybody other than somebody who looks like yourself, and if that is
being fed somewhere along the line by some nasty website that's blaming the
Muslims or the Afghans or whoever for our problems, then you can sort of see . They don't actually have the
cultural literacy skills to actually navigate that cesspool that they've kind
of, or whirlpool that they've got themselves caught up in.
00.16.50
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: Tarrant's father drove a garbage truck; his mother was
a teacher.
Friends describe an
awkward boy, obsessed with computer games, who was picked on at school for his
weight.
00.17.04
DR GREG JENKS, ANGLICAN
DEAN, GRAFTON: I don't know Brenton particularly, so I don't know what his
success rate at school was like and so on. But he clearly was somebody who
didn't go on to university, he got very involved in the gym and personal
fitness and so on. He got a job eventually working in a gym, he was obviously
going to the gym, he got into one of those programmes where you become a
personal trainer.
00.17.29
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: Becoming a gym junkie was life changing for Tarrant.
In 2011 he boasted online:
"I run fitness
classes with 20+ people daily who do nothing but stare, ask questions and mimic
my movements for 60 minutes. And I enjoy it. My self-respect is through the
roof, I can truly do anything I put my mind to... I am a goddamn monster of
willpower, I just need a goal or object to work towards."
In another post, he
wrote:
"There is more to
life than money. But while ever I work I do not have time to do what I truly
enjoy doing, playing video games, snorting coke and hiring strippers."
00.18.17
NEIL FERGUS, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CONSULTANT : He fits a bit of a profile in
terms of white supremacist and right-wing extremist, that they more often than
not have not achieved any particular success in terms of their professional or
personal lives . In a sense you can say that what they're looking is for
something to take their frustrations out with, frustrations about a range of
different things.
00.18.46
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
When Tarrant was twenty, his father took his own life while battling
mesothelioma.
Tarrant left Grafton.
His travels took him to New Zealand, Southeast Asia, China, North Korea, and
later Turkey, Europe, Africa and Pakistan and exposed him to a whole new world
of ideas.
00.19.13
NEIL FERGUS,
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CONSULTANT : We understand that
he was the beneficiary of a large inheritance, and for whatever reason he just
decided to spend a lot of time and money traveling. There is nothing untoward
about a number of the places that he's gone. North
Korea does stand out. That is not a tourist destination ,
it's not a business destination.
00.19.35
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: Tarrant was in Europe in April 2017, when an Uzbek
asylum-seeker and suspected Islamic State sympathiser drove a truck into a
department store in Stockholm.
The attack killed five
people including an 11-year-old girl.
Tarrant became fixated on
this attack. He was obsessed with immigration levels in Europe, the history of
Europe's wars, and the delusion that the white race was being over-run.
00.20.07
DR DAVID KILCULLEN, COUNTER-TERRORISM STRATEGIST: He talks in his manifesto
about being radicalised by seeing Muslims in France, in
particular, and that he also visited a number of famous historic battle
sites in Europe. In the manifesto, and in what he says, he seems to be tapping
into much more of a white supremacist European narrative rather than an
Australian or an American narrative. And in particular, he
refers to, Anders Behring Breivik, who carried out a horrendous bombing and gun
massacre in Oslo in 2011.
00.20.49
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
Tarrant's travels coincided with the rise of an increasingly aggressive
right-wing movement across Europe and the United States.
It erupted in
Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017
PROTESTORS CHANTING
"Blood and soil . blood and soil"
00.21.07
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: The scenes evoking Nazism revealed a movement that had
largely been hiding in the darker corners of the internet.
PROTESTORS CHANTING "Blood and soil . blood and soil.."
00.21.19
ROBERT EVANS, BELLINGCAT
ONLINE EXTREMISM INVESTIGATOR: Charlottesville was a seminal moment for the
global far right because it proved that the internet has given them the ability
to mobilise a large number of people and to have a
large real-world impact in the way they hadn't for decades prior to the rally.
In the early 2000s a couple of dozen people at a single Klan or neo Nazi
gathering would have been huge. Hundreds of people showed up from all around
the United States and all around the world at Charlottesville and this is
because the internet has given them the ability to disseminate their propaganda
to a wider audience and to organise in a way that would have been impossible in
an earlier age because there's just not enough of them in any one given city or
area.
00.21.59
MATT QUINN, FMR WHITE SUPREMACIST AND DERADICALISATION CONSULTANT: You've got
someone that's like so angry and upset and isolated in the community, they're
not going to go to the local tennis club and talk about all the bad things that
are going for them in the world. So the only place
that these people can currently find, you know, is these groups online.
00.22.15
PROF. PAUL SPOONLEY,
RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM RESEARCHER: It has been a game changer for these groups.
The ability to be anonymous, the ability to convey their views cheaply, to do
it one to many, to do it instantaneously. We have got some major questions to
ask about extremist politics. In this case, white supremacists, extremist
politics and the role of social and online media. It has been a disaster in
terms of encouraging them and enabling them
00.22.46
SPEAKER AT RALLY: " we're a lucky country , we've
seen what happens in other countries , In Europe"
00.22.50
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
The far right was also emerging out of the darkness in Australia.
SPEAKER AT RALLY:
"Wherever Islam goes there is trouble.."
00.22.58
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
After the Lindt Cafe siege in December 2014, Reclaim Australia made a name for
itself capitalising on rising Islamophobia.
SPEAKER AT RALLY: ".. they are not loyal Australians"
00.23.10
MATT QUINN, FMR WHITE
SUPREMACIST AND DERADICALISATION CONSULTANT: : You
know the far-right extremist groups you know, really did start coming out you
know, with more confidence and online presence. You know, after and around the
Lindt cafe and the federal election you know, especially with you know, Pauline
Hanson, you know, people were supporting her , you
know with the banning Muslim immigration .
00.23.32
SPEAKER AT RALLY : " ...that goes thought your veins , it is in
your spirit , never forget it and always remember respect the honour and the mateship , that makes us who we are
Aussie Aussie Aussie.. oi oi oi "
00.23.54
NEIL FERGUS,
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CONSULTANT : With the upsurge
of Islamic terrorism that has been used by some of those people who have long
been involved in the white supremacist right wing extremist milieu to try to
promote their views and potentially get some recruits.
Demonstrator: "If
you want to see what a Fascist looks like they're right over there."
00.24.18
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
More militant groups splintered off from the movement.
One anti Islam hate group
the United Patriots Front had more than 100-thousand Facebook followers,
including Brenton Tarrant.
00.24.30
DEMONSTRATOR: The UPF
Facebook page has been deleted by Facebook
00.24.35
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
On Saturday the ABC's Background Briefing revealed that in a 2016 Facebook
comment, Tarrant praised the UPF's then leader, neo Nazi Blair Cottrell, as his
"emperor"
00.24.50
ROBERT EVANS, BELLINGCAT ONLINE EXTREMISM INVESTIGATOR: I think the fact that
the shooter was commenting on neo Nazi Facebook pages absolutely should have
tripped an alarm and again I would ask you to consider if this person had been
registered with the government as owning a substantial number of firearms and a
substantial amount of ammunition and had been commenting on a radical Islamic
Facebook page that specifically advocated for holy war I think the government
of New Zealand and the government of Australia would absolutely have been
looking into this person before the shooting, he would not have been an unknown
quantity.
00.25.24
DR DAVID KILCULLEN,
COUNTER-TERRORISM STRATEGIST: Unfortunately it's not
surprising that the shooter was an Australian. We in this country,
unfortunately have a very robust right-wing uh extremist community. Uh, we have
groups, I won't give their names, but we have a number of groups in Melbourne,
in Sydney and elsewhere who are well known to the police and the security
services who are have been engaged in various propaganda activities, training
in the bush, carrying out leafleting and graffiti activities and generally
trying to raise awareness around white supremacists, or neo-Nazi ideology, some
of them are linked in some ways to the outlaw motorcycle gang culture, many are
not, some of them come from the skinhead groups, others don't but there's, I
would say conservatively three-hundred to five-hundred people that have been
identified by state police or commonwealth organisations as potentially a
threat.
00.26.37
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: In the past four years, Australian authorities say
they've thwarted multiple right-wing threats.
One man allegedly planned
to bomb three targets in Melbourne.
00.26.56
On the New South Wales
Central Coast, a Nazi sympathiser was caught with a stockpile of guns after
saying he wanted to commit a mass shooting.
00.27.08
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
How close did they come to actually happening?
NEIL FERGUS,
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CONSULTANT : Well, I think
without timely intervention of security forces, there is a strong likelihood
that they would have proceeded with their plans but you have to understand that
we are talking about a relatively small group of individuals. They are not
coordinated in the sense of a normal political structure. The names of the
groups that they are involved in change. The people in those groups regularly
have fallouts with each other. The reality is that with the extreme right wing
in this country, a number of the more violent crimes
that they have been associated with have been crimes of violence against each
other, including homicides.
00.28.04
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP : The white nationalist
movement also has deep roots in New Zealand, where the country's intelligence
service has warned for years it's drastically underfunded.
00.28.15
PROF. PAUL SPOONLEY,
RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM RESEARCHER: Christchurch is the ground zero for the
extreme right in New Zealand. They'd had that reputation from the 1970s, and
certainly through the 1990s. I have always struggled to convey to New
Zealanders the fact that A, they were here, and B, they were expressing
extremely violent views about their fellow citizens, and C, that there was
always the potential amongst those communities to enact the violence that they
had articulated in documents or online
00.29.00
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP : There are now concerns that authorities in the West
- preoccupied with the rise of Islamic extremism - failed to grasp the threat
from the far right.
00.29.12
ROBERT EVANS, BELLINGCAT ONLINE EXTREMISM INVESTIGATOR: When ISIS began to
expand in 2013-14, they had a significant internet component to the caliphate,
they recruited thousands of foreign fighters using the internet, using Twitter
and Facebook, and they spread an enormous amount of propaganda via social media
and there was a massive global effort on behalf of these technology companies
and on behalf of global law enforcement to shut that down and it was extremely
successful. We have not seen anything close to the same sort of response and
the same sort of concerted effort to stop the spread of far-right fascist
propaganda on the internet and social media nor have we seen the same kind of
monitoring in the spaces where they gather.
00.29.58
NEIL FERGUS, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CONSULTANT : The scale of hate speech has
hit new highs, and while we're reading some of the material coming from these
groups and being absolutely appalled at it, it's actually symptomatic of what
we're seeing on a wider scale across the social media where we are seeing what
frankly is tantamount to a criminal offense. We have not had a lot of
prosecutions that I'm aware of in relation to people sending hateful and arguably
illegal messages, threatening people, and I think there's a case for that to be
reviewed and improved.
00.30.46
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
In late 2017 Tarrant settled in Dunedin.
He rented a house, where
neighbours say he kept to himself.
00.30.56
PROF. PAUL SPOONLEY,
RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM RESEARCHER: My feeling is that he chose New Zealand
because it was a soft target in terms of security. The event has raised some
real issues around gun control and gun licensing in this country, so it might
be that he chose it because he could access the firearms that he required. And
perhaps he chose it to make a point. I mean, perhaps he chose it to illustrate
that even a relatively tolerant, quiet society on the very edge of the world
was not immune to terrorism.
00.31.39
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
Tarrant obtained a gun licence and joined the Bruce Rifle club south of
Dunedin. It's a small club with just over 100 members .
Ray McLellan has lived
near the club for the past 16 years.
00.31.55
RAY MCLELLAN: It's one of
the only 600 metre ranges left in New Zealand, I believe, and so I imagine they
would be going for accuracy over range and stuff like that with a variety of
weapons and that's what they tend to practise.
00.32.12
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
What's the history and significance of the club to New Zealand?
RAY MCLELLAN : It's the I
believe the oldest incorporated rifle club in New Zealand and I'm not too sure,
but I think it was originated from the old days of the militia, when various communities
organised militia and stuff like that and they set it up and it's just gone on
from that, I guess.
00.32.47
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
In this tiny rural community locals are used to the sound of gun shots coming
from the Bruce Rifle Club, but one neighbour's told us
just three weeks before the Christchurch massacre there was a sustained barrage
of gunfire like nothing she'd heard before.
In her words
, "it sounded like war breaking out".
00.33.12
Members of the Bruce Rifle Club told Four Corners they saw no signs that
Tarrant was dangerous:
"The Club is feeling
shocked, stunned, betrayed and used that we've had this person in our Club who
has used our facilities ... Our hearts and our sympathies go out to the
friends, family, and loved ones of the victims and the people of
Christchurch."
00.33.37
Police have spent days searching Tarrant's house
He had barely any
furniture and his lease was due to run out at the end
of this month.
It was here that he wrote the final version of his so-called manifesto inspired
by Norwegian far-right mass murderer , Anders Breivik
00.34.00
PROF. PAUL SPOONLEY, RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM RESEARCHER: Well I think it's a copy
of the Breivik manifesto, which he published at the time of the killings in
Norway, and at times it's incoherent, at times it's a rant. There's
elements that are difficult to understand, but it also has the characteristics
of modern supreme right views about the world, and the clash between white
western societies and Islam and Muslims. So you see
there the classic arguments about the threat to our, "White," and
"Civilization." The threat in terms of the replacement theory, which
is at the core of what he believes, which is the idea that Muslims are
outbreeding whites, but they're also providing a cultural and economic threat.
00.34.51
DR GREG JENKS, ANGLICAN
DEAN, GRAFTON: My hunch is that this manifesto which I'm not going to read, and
I hope nobody will read it because we don't want to give oxygen to that sort of
hatred, I presume it's been cobbled together with stuff from different Web
sources and it's him for 70 odd pages spewing out his hatred and his prejudice.
00.35.11
ROBERT EVANS, BELLINGCAT
ONLINE EXTREMISM INVESTIGATOR: The Christchurch shooter's specific part of the
internet he came from was a message board called 8Chan and specifically a chunk
of 8chan called slash /pol. Now 8chan is one of the 5000 or so largest websites
on the internet so it's quite popular and I would describe 8chan and other
similar sites as almost a 24 hour a day Klan or neo-Nazi rally where every now
and then someone will leave to commit a violent attack.
00.35.41
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
On Wednesday 13th March two days before the massacre, Tarrant flooded Facebook
with posts on extreme right-wing themes
That same day he posted
photos on twitter of guns and magazines covered with symbols of his fascist
ideology
00.36.04
NEIL FERGUS,
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CONSULTANT : It should have
raised the alarm if there were the appropriate agencies looking where they
should have been looking, but as we've subsequently learned from looking at the
situation in New Zealand that the competent authority in New Zealand appears to
be struggling with its capability . So, they are not particularly well served
in terms of resources, and this is a very resource-intensive activity.
00.36.37
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: The day before the attack Tarrant updated his Facebook
profile with the slogan "I am Hope" and "New Zealander of the
Year"
At midday on the day of
the attack, he posted links to his manifesto on Facebook.
At 1:28pm on the online message board 8chan he announced what he called
"an attack against the invaders" and provided a link to a Facebook
livestream.
3 minutes later, he
emailed his manifesto to 70 addresses including the office of New Zealand Prime
Minister, Jacinda Ardern.
At 1:40pm he walked into
the mosque.
00.37.25
DR DAVID KILCULLEN, COUNTER-TERRORISM STRATEGIST: The moment I first heard
about it, I knew it would probably be some kind of, um,
white supremacist or neo-Nazi type attack. What I didn't expect was how, sort
of flippant, and sarcastic and ironic the, um, the shooter would be. And when I
saw the video, in particular, I realised that we were
dealing with something quite new.
00.37.52
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP : On the 8chan message board, the live streamed
attack was celebrated.
00.38.03
ROBERT EVANS, BELLINGCAT
ONLINE EXTREMISM INVESTIGATOR: As he began to kill people
I would describe the result of the other users on 8chan slash poll board as
riotous glee. They were incredibly happy incredibly excited to be witnessing so
many people being killed, so many Muslims being killed.
If global law enforcement had been monitoring that board and watching when this
person began his attack and posted his video, he was driving to the site of the
attack for something like six minutes before he began shooting. You could
clearly hear over the audio of his video the GPS directions telling anyone
listening where he was going. If law enforcement from the United States or from
Great Britain had been dealing with this the way they deal with Islamic terror
which is where they communicate with each other, someone could have reached out
to law enforcement in New Zealand and warned them about what was going to
happen and warned them about what was going to happen and cut down the response
time before armed police units arrived to intercept him significantly.
00.38.58
PROF. PAUL SPOONLEY, RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM RESEARCHER :
The fact that a 17-minute video was uploaded and then Facebook had to take down
1.5 million showings of that, and I would point out that they took down 1.2
million on upload, that leaves 300,000 that have been online for some time. I
think it raises some fundamental questions about us as a society. Have we
invested enough in social cohesion? Did we know enough about what was happening
in our community? And of course, for me, one key question is we are never, ever
going to say again that New Zealand doesn't have extreme right-wing activists.
CALL TO PRAYER
00.40.47
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP: Three days ago, thousands gathered for Friday prayers
in the park across the road from Al Noor Mosque.
00.41.08
IMAM
GAMAL FOUDA, AL NOOR MOSQUE: "Islamophobia kills. Muslims have felt its pain for many years. Islamophobia is real.
It is a targeted campaign to influence people to dehumanise and irrationally
fear Muslims. To fear what we wear, to fear the choice of food we eat, to fear
the way we pray and to fear the way we practise our faith. We call upon
governments around the world, including New Zealand and the neighbouring
countries, to bring an end to hate speech and the politics of fear."
00.42.23
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
A community besieged by distrust and hate is praying for a turning point.
00.42.35
SEAN RUBINSZTEIN-DUNLOP:
Do you think you would return to the mosque again?
HISHAM EL ZEINY: Definitely, I will. I wouldn't feel
easy but definitely, I will. If we abandon the mosque,
we give him what he wanted, and we should not do this. Seeing the response of
the community, seeing the response of the community in New Zealand gives us
strength. People are wonderful, and they're standing with us. But it wouldn't
be easy, though. I mean, we'll definitely go back, but
we'll never feel safe.
In memory of
Hati Mohemmed Daoud NABI
Mohsen Mohammed AL HARBI
Kamel Moh'd Kamal Kamel DARWISH
Junaid ISMAIL
Mucaad IBRAHIM
Muse Nur AWALE
Hussein Mohamed Khalil MOUSTAFA
Mounir Guirgis SOLIMAN
Ghulam HUSSAIN
Muhammad Abdus SAMAD
Musa Vali Suleman PATEL
Ashraf ALI
Lilik Abdul HAMID
Amjad Kasem HAMID
Matiullah SAFI
Ashraf El-Moursy RAGHEB
Mohamad Moosid MOHAMEDHOSEN
Khaled Mwafak ALHAJ-MUSTAFA
Haroon MAHMOOD
Muhammad Zeshan RAZA
Syed Jahandad ALI
Ata Mohammad Ata ELAYYAN
MD Mojammel HOQ
Farhaj AHSAN
Ramiz Arifbhai VORA
Syed Areeb AHMED
Ozair KADIR
Tariq Rashid OMAR
Muhammad Haziq MOHD-TARMIZI
Hamza Khaled ALHAJ MUSTAFA
Sayyad Ahmad MILNE
Linda Susan ARMSTONG
Karam BIBI
Husna AHMED
Ahmed Gamal Eldin Mohamed
ABDEL GHANY
Ali Mah'd Abdullah ELMADANI
Abdukadir ELMI
Abdelfattah QASEM
Osama Adnan Yousef ABUKWAIK
Muhammad Suhail SHAHID
Ansi KARIPPAKULAM ALIBAVA
Maheboob Allarakha KHOKHAR
Ashraf ALI
Arif Mohamedali VOHRA
Naeem RASHID
Mohammed Imran KHAN