Tarrant
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FILE PHOTO: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses his supporters during a rally for the upcoming local elections, in Istanbul, Turkey March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Murad Sezer
March 19, 2019
ANKARA (Reuters) – President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday called on New Zealand to restore the death penalty for the gunman who killed 50 people at two Christchurch mosques, warning that Turkey would make the attacker pay for his act if New Zealand did not.
Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday after a lone gunman opened fire at the two mosques during Muslim Friday prayers.
“You heinously killed 50 of our siblings. You will pay for this. If New Zealand doesn’t make you, we know how to make you pay one way or another,” Erdogan told an election rally of thousands in northern Turkey. He did not elaborate.
He said Turkey was wrong to have abolished the death penalty 15 years ago, and added that New Zealand should make legal arrangements so that the Christchurch gunman could face capital punishment.
“If the New Zealand parliament doesn’t make this decision I will continue to argue this with them constantly. The necessary action needs to be taken,” he said.
Erdogan is seeking to drum up support for his Islamist-rooted AK Party in March 31 local elections. At weekend election rallies he showed video footage of the shootings which the gunman had broadcast on Facebook, as well as extracts from a “manifesto” posted by the attacker and later taken down.
That earned a rebuke from New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who said he told Turkey’s foreign minister and vice president that showing the video could endanger New Zealanders abroad.
Despite Peters’ intervention, an extract from the manifesto was flashed up on a screen at Erdogan’s rally again on Tuesday, as well as brief footage of the gunman entering one of the mosques and shooting as he approached the door.
Erdogan has said the gunman issued threats against Turkey and the president himself, and wanted to drive Turks from Turkey’s northwestern, European region. Majority Muslim Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, is split between an Asian part east of the Bosphorus, and a European half to the west.
Erdogan’s AK Party, which has dominated Turkish politics for more than 16 years, is battling for votes as the economy tips into recession after years of strong growth. Erdogan has cast the local elections as a “matter of survival” in the face of threats including Kurdish militants, Islamophobia and incidents such as the New Zealand shootings.
A senior Turkish security source said Tarrant entered Turkey twice in 2016 – for a week in March and for more than a month in September. Turkish authorities have begun investigating everything from hotel records to camera footage to try to ascertain the reason for his visits, the source said.
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Dominic Evans and Nick Tattersall)
Source: OANN
Al Noor mosque shooting survivor Farhid Ahmed poses with a photo of his wife Husna, who was killed in the attack, after an interview with Reuters in Christchurch, New Zealand March 18, 2019. Picture taken March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Edgar Su TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
March 19, 2019
By Charlotte Greenfield and Tom Westbrook
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (Reuters) – Husna Ahmed was 19 when she arrived in New Zealand from Bangladesh on her wedding day. Waiting to meet her was Farid, the man she would marry in a few hours, as their families had agreed.
A quarter of a century later, the life they had built together was torn apart at the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch when a gunman walked into the building, firing on worshippers at Friday prayers.
Husna encountered the gunman on his way out of the mosque. He shot her on the footpath. She fell and he fired two more shots, killing her instantly.
Farid, who uses a wheelchair after an earlier accident, was talking to a friend and was delayed from joining worshippers at his usual spot at the front of the mosque, instead praying in a small side room.
He managed to escape when he heard the shooting begin, returning when the gunman left, to find many of his friends and community members dead and comfort those who were dying.
Farid found out about his wife’s death when a detective he knew called his niece as they waited outside the mosque.
She passed the phone: “I don’t want you to wait the whole night, Farid. Go home, she will not come,” Farid said the detective told him.
“At the moment I hear that, my response was I felt numb,” Farid told Reuters. “I had tears but I didn’t break down.” His niece crumbled.
A total of 50 people were killed in the rampage, with as many wounded, as the gunman went from Al Noor to another mosque in the South Island city.
Most victims were migrants or refugees from countries including Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Syria, Turkey, Somalia and Afghanistan.
Husna was one of five members of a growing but tight-knit Bangladeshi community killed, according to the Bangladesh consul in New Zealand, Shafiqur Rahman Bhuiyan. Four others were wounded, one critically, he added.
Members of the Bangladesh cricket team, in town for a test match against New Zealand, narrowly avoided the carnage, turning up at the Al Noor mosque soon after the attack took place.
Based on what eyewitnesses told him, Farid said instead of hiding, Husna helped women and children inside the mosque and ran to the front of the building to look for him.
“She’s such a person who always put other people first and she was even not afraid to give her life saving other people,” Farid said.
Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, has been charged with murder. He entered no plea and police said he is likely to face more charges.
The slaughter has rocked Christchurch, and New Zealand, to its core, blanketing the city in grief and driving Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to promise swift gun law reform.
Farid said he had forgiven his wife’s killer.
“I want to give the message to the person who did this, or if he has any friends who also think like this: I still love you,” Farid said. “I want to hug you and I want to tell him in face that I am talking from my heart. I have no grudge against you, I never hated you, I will never hate you.”
LIKE A MOTHER
A few hours after the massacre as evening fell, the front room of Farid’s home in a sleepy Christchurch suburb where he runs a homeopathy business was full with survivors and friends grieving for a woman many described as like a mother to them.
Husna was born on 12 October in 1974 in Sylhet, a city on the banks the Surma River, in northeastern Bangladesh. She was so fast that Shahzalal Junior High School would only let her run three races, to give her rivals a chance, Farid said.
She moved to New Zealand in 1994.
Thin, nervous and overwhelmed by leaving everyone she knew for a new life in an alien country, she burst into tears when her husband-to-be picked her up from Auckland airport.
He comforted her on the long drive back to Nelson, where he was living, and where she quickly found her feet.
With almost no other Bangladeshis in the small city, Husna made English-speaking friends and learned the language within six months. Farid said she spoke it with more of a Kiwi accent than he did.
When Farid’s workmates at a meatpacking plant agreed to work half an hour longer on Fridays so he could take a break to pray, she cooked them a feast every week in thanks.
And when Farid was partially paralyzed after being run over by a car outside his house, after four years of marriage, she moved with him to Christchurch and became his nurse.
“Our hobby was we used to talk to each other. A lot. And we never felt bored,” he said.
REBUILDING CHRISTCHURCH
When Christchurch was razed by a deadly earthquake in 2011, Husna helped settle an influx of Bangladeshi migrants – qualified engineers, metalworkers and builders – who came to assist the rebuilding of the shattered city.
Mohammad Omar Faruk, 36, was one of the new arrivals. Faruk was working as a welder in Singapore but leapt at the opportunity to come to New Zealand where working conditions were better and permanent residency was possible.
Faruk was also killed at Al Noor mosque.
His employer, Rob van Peer, said he had allowed his team to leave early last Friday after they finished a job by lunchtime, meaning Faruk could attend Friday prayers.
Van Peer said Faruk was loved by his colleagues for his loyal and friendly personality and fast, precise welds.
Zakaria Bhuiyan, a welder at another engineering firm, also died. Newly married, he was waiting for a visitor visa so his wife could travel from Bangladesh.
Mojammel Haque worked as a dentist in Bangladesh and was studying in New Zealand for an advanced medical qualification when he was killed.
All three men knew Husna, said Mojibur Rahman, a welder and former flatmate of Faruk.
“It’s really hard because we are a little community but everyone’s living here in unity, we know each other, we share everything with each together,” he said. “Now I don’t know what’s going to happen, how we become normal.”
The fifth Bangladeshi victim was Abus Samad, 66, a former faculty member of Bangladesh Agriculture University who had been teaching at Christchurch’s Lincoln University.
CUSTOMS AND CARE
Many new workers to Christchurch brought young families, or were starting them and Husna took it upon herself to care for women through their pregnancies, often waking Farid at all hours so he could drive her to the births.
“We think she’s like a mother…if there’s something we needed, we go to Husna,” said Mohammed Jahangir Alan, another welder.
Husna guided his wife, then 19, to a midwife and a doctor and joined her in the delivery room as she gave birth to a baby girl, Alan said.
A few days later Husna shaved the infant’s head, an Islamic ritual which she did for dozens of children in the community. She was so gentle the baby fell asleep while she pulled the razor over the soft skin.
Husna would also lead the customary washing and prayer ritual for women who died. She was due to lead a workshop the day after her death to teach other women the process.
Now, Husna’s devastated female family members will wash her for her funeral, expected later this week.
“We know she would just want us to be a part of it, to wash her,” said her sister-in-law Ayesha Corner.
After the burial, Farid says he wants to continue the work he and his wife used to do and to care for their 15-year-old daughter.
When the lockdown at her school lifted on Friday, their daughter returned home, knowing only her mother was missing and asking where she was.
“I didn’t miss a second, I said: ‘She is with God,’” Farid said.
“She said: ‘You are lying’. She said: ‘Are you telling me I don’t have a mother?’”
“I said: ‘Yes, but I am your mother now and I am your father…we have to change the roles.”
(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield and Tom Westbrook in CHRISTCHURCH; Additional reporting by Ruma Paul in DHAKA; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
Source: OANN
Japanese Olympic Committee President Tsunekazu Takeda attends JOC board of directors meeting in Tokyo, Japan, March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
March 19, 2019
TOKYO (Reuters) – The head of Japan’s Olympic Committee, Tsunekazu Takeda, said on Tuesday he will step down from his position when his current term ends in June.
French prosecutors placed Takeda under formal investigation in December for suspected corruption in Japan’s successful bid to host the 2020 Summer Games.
Takeda, who was president of the 2020 bid committee, said during a JOC board of directors meeting in Tokyo that he would step down from his position when his term ends and not seek re-election.
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka and Jack Tarrant; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
Source: OANN
People visit a memorial site for victims of Friday’s shooting, in front of the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
March 18, 2019
WELLINGTON (Reuters) – After days of intense grieving for New Zealand’s worst-ever mass shooting, attention began to turn to how the country’s gun laws need to change and what warning signs might have been missed ahead of a gunman’s attack on two mosques that killed 50 people.
Bodies of the victims of Friday’s attacks in Christchurch were being washed and prepared for burial in a Muslim ritual process, with teams of volunteers flown in from overseas to assist with the heavy workload.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her Cabinet had made in-principle decisions on changes to gun laws which she would announce next Monday, saying now was the time to act on tightening access to firearms.
Simon Bridges, leader of the opposition National Party, said he wanted to get details of the changes to see if there could be bipartisan support in Parliament. The National Party draws support from rural areas, where gun ownership is higher than in urban areas.
“We know that change is required. I’m willing to look at anything that is going to enhance our safety – that’s our position,” Bridges told TVNZ.
In addition to the 50 killed, dozens were wounded at the two mosques in the South Island city during Friday prayers.
Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist who was living in Dunedin, on New Zealand’s South Island, was charged with murder on Saturday. Tarrant was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5, where police said he was likely to face more charges.
Andrew Little, the minister who oversees New Zealand’s intelligence agencies, said monitoring of online activity had been stepped up in the wake of the Christchurch attacks.
“There are people who have been online making statements who have been interviewed by the police; that will continue. There is a level of intervention, there is a heightened level of monitoring,” Little said on TVNZ on Monday night.
Ardern said there would be an inquiry into what government agencies “knew, or could or should have known” about the alleged gunman and whether the attack could be prevented.
“We have to know whether there have been failings, whether there have been gaps,” Little said on TVNZ. “We have to leave no stone unturned to not only deal with the perpetrator and ensure the criminal justice system gets to deal with him, but to understand how this could have happened in this country.”
More than 250 New Zealand police staff are working on the inquiry in the attacks, with staff from the U.S. FBI and Australia’s Federal Police working with local investigators.
In the wake of the deadly attack, other incidents were drawing scrutiny. A gun club in the northern town of Kaitaia burned down early on Tuesday morning, and police were treating the blaze as suspicious. A bomb hoax that closed Dunedin Airport on Sunday night and caused some flights to be diverted was under investigation, police said.
A black laptop bag was thought to have been bought onto the airfield by someone climbing over fences around the Dunedin airport. Police found a note written by the person who left the “hoax device,” which was dealt with by defense force experts.
“The insensitive nature of this act in light of recent events cannot be overstated,” police said in a statement.
(Writing by John Mair; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Source: OANN
The Christchurch mosque where a gunman opened fire and killed dozens of Muslims has links to radical Islamic terrorism, according to a New Zealand newspaper.
The newspaper, called Stuff, reported on a story in 2014 about how two Australians killed in Yemen by drone strike were radicalized in Christchurch mosques.
Specifically, Christopher Havard was reportedly radicalized by the Al Noor mosque, the same mosque targeted by shooter Brenton Tarrant.
The article has since been wiped from the internet after the Christchurch shooting, but an archived version is available HERE.
From Stuff:
“Jones was killed alongside Australian Christopher Havard, whose parents said he was introduced to radical Islam at the Al-Noor mosque in Christchurch.”
“Mosque leaders confirmed Havard stayed there and studied in 2011, but denied radical teaching took place.”
“But a man who attended a converts’ weekend at the mosque 10 years ago said a visiting speaker from Indonesia talked about violent jihad and plenty shared his views. ‘Most of the men were angry with the moral weakness of New Zealand. I would say they were radical.’”
“Havard was the subject of an AFP arrest warrant over the kidnapping of Westerners in Yemen in December, 2012. It is not known if Jones, who reportedly fought under the name Abu Suhaib al-Australi, was involved.”
“Jones and Havard were with five others in the convoy hit by a missile fired from a US drone in Yemen’s Hadramout province on November 19. While authorities believe they were ‘foot soldiers’ of AQAP [Al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula], they were not the main target of the attack.”
Conservative commenatator Milo Yiannopoulos pointed out the connection on Facebook over the weekend asking, “If you’d known that this mosque was a terrorist factory, would it have changed your feelings about the news at all?”
“The Al-Noor mosque in Christchurch targeted by Brenton Tarrant produced at least two terrorists, from a very small congregation,” he wrote Saturday.
According to literary magazine New English Review, New Zealand authorities should investigate the mosque for signs of radicalization.
“The Al Noor mosque should receive some official scrutiny but indiscriminate carnage of innocents isn’t the way,” reports the Review.
“Maybe the New Zealand authorities have, or will now that his friend Mark Taylor is soon to be returned ‘home’ from a Kurdish prison, investigate the circumstances around the radicalisation at Al Noor, of jihadi Christopher Harvard, and any part played in the radicalisation of Daryl Jones.”
Will Johnson joins Alex Jones live via Skype to talk with callers about the distinct possibility of Globalist forces using the New Zealand shooting, whether as a premeditated false flag or not, to practice ’emergency’ internet censorship and gun confiscation on a global scale.
Source: InfoWars
Brenton Tarrant, the suspect behind the massacre of 50 people at two New Zealand mosques, has fired his court-appointed lawyer and wants to defend himself amid concerns he might use the high-profile trial to promote his beliefs.
Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian charged with murder over the brutal attack, has sacked his lawyer Richard Peters, the attorney told the NZ Herald on Sunday.
The alleged shooter parted ways with Peters on Saturday, shortly after his brief appearance before Christchurch District Court that morning. Peters said that the Australian “seemed quite clear and lucid” as he refused his legal assistance.
“He didn’t appear to me to be facing any challenges or mental impairment, other than holding fairly extreme views,” the lawyer said. Apart from the calm demeanor the attacker displayed during his several minutes before the judge, little is known about his current state of mind since Tarrant had not issued a statement or attempted to address the court.
He did not seek bail, neither did he appeal to have his name withheld.
The mass shooting in New Zealand appears to line up with the narrative that conservatives are violent and hateful and therefore deserve to be censored. Matt Bracken joins Alex to reveal how actually Facebook is responsible for the attention this murderer received.
Tarrant’s now-former lawyer said that the alleged assailant did not appear to show any remorse – though they did not specifically discuss that topic.
According to Peters, his sacking might be an early indication that Tarrant wants to make the most of his trial by treating it as an opportunity to promote his violent extremist views. In that case, it will be up to the presiding judge to cut short any such PR stunt.
“I suspect that he won’t shy away from publicity, and that will probably be the way he runs the trial. The job of the trial judge will be to deal with that.”
The lawyer believes the court will not be “very sympathetic” to Tarrant if he opts to use it as a tool in his propaganda game.
While the court cannot preclude Tarrant from representing himself, it is likely to appoint a lawyer who would advise the alleged attacker on the rules of judicial procedure, Peters noted.
As concerns are mounting that the alleged gunman could subvert the NZ judicial system to serve his own interests, the New Zealand authorities are asking the media and the general public to give Tarrant as little exposure as possible.
Judging by his previous actions, publicity is exactly what Tarrant is seeking. He sent a lengthy manifesto to NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s office 10 minutes before going on a shooting rampage inside the Al Noor mosque. He then live-streamed the whole massacre on Facebook.
While the original video has long since been removed, Facebook is still struggling to delete copies, having erased 1.5 million instances of the video in the first 24 hours after the attack.
In order to prevent the spread of the video, the New Zealand government has cracked down on those who defy the ban on ‘objectionable’ content.
On Sunday, a 22-year-old man was arrested for allegedly distributing the blood-curdling video. The man, who faces jail if found guilty, will appear before court on Monday.
The alleged shooter’s next appearance before the judge is scheduled for April 5.
The Mosque shooter’s manifesto is filled with contradictions typical of an insane person. Alex Jones takes this story head on and delivers his break down of the manifesto meant to be a window into the killer’s mind.
Source: InfoWars
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