Brenton Tarrant, an Australian right-wing extremist and anti-immigrant, born in 1990, carried out a terrorist attack on March 9, 2019 on two mosques in New Zealand, killing 51 Muslims and wounding dozens. life in 2021.

Brenton Tarrant expressed his criminal motive, "I have no remorse. I only wish I could kill as many invaders as possible."

Birth and upbringing

Tarrant was born in 1990 and grew up in the town of Grafton, which is located north of "New South Wales" in Australia, and then resided in "Dunden", New Zealand at the end of 2017.

Tarrant, the second son of his British parents, has a lower-income working class family, as he described himself in his "Great Replacement" manifesto (the name of a far-right anti-immigrant movement) on Facebook.

He added in the 74-page statement that he had a "normal childhood without major problems."

His classmates describe him as a lonely child without friends, spending most of his time alone in his room sitting at a computer screen, and he was known for his many pranks (some of which were harmful) and bullying others.

Fitzgerald, Tarrant's grandmother who took care of him and his older sister Lauren, says that the family's problems that ended with the divorce of his parents may have caused him to grow up in a tense environment, and also says that he was a naughty boy and always ran away from them.

Tarrant had no interest in sports, so while the family went to see his older sister playing hockey, he sat far away, not paying attention to what was going on around him and just playing in the sand alone.

Tarrant had athletic skills and physical ability like his sports-obsessed father. In high school, he suffered a knee injury that required him to go to treatment, and his athletic inclinations began to show and he became obsessed like his father over time.

In his youth he was said to have been a very rude young man, and did some mischievous acts, but they were not so horrific as his last attack.


study and work

Brenton Tarrant dropped out of high school and didn't go to college because he didn't see anything worthwhile in it.

He worked as a personal trainer in a squash and fitness center in 2010. He was known for following a strict diet and was devoting most of his time to exercise and training others. He never spoke about his political or religious beliefs before, but he was bad in social relations, as described by one of the women who visited the center.

He was known for being strict in his diet, which he imposed on customers in the hall of all races and ethnicities.

His participation on social networking sites showed something of his hidden personality, as he described himself in one of his blogs in response to someone who accused him of either disrespecting himself or lacking confidence because he did not want to work. He wrote, "I am a strong-willed beast .. I lost 52 kilograms of my weight in a month I've been on a diet for 3 years, I've trained 20 people a day, I can do everything I set my mind to."

In 2010, he became active in "white nationalist" forums, and received a huge amount of insurance after his father's death, so he decided to enjoy the rest of his life away from looking for a job.

He left his job as a coach and decided to travel and tourism after the large sum he received from his father's inheritance, and then got involved in the "kebab removal" business (an Internet term for the activity of "preventing Islam from invading Europe").

A tourist trip that turned him into a terrorist

His tourism took another unexpected turn. After a trip in 27 regions, his interest in history in the European region and the Crusades that took place between the Ottoman Empire and European countries began.

At the beginning of 2017, he traveled to the battle areas between the two sides, including Serbia, and where he passed the Museum of Marko Miljanov Popovic (a Serbian general from Montenegro who fought the Ottomans in the 19th century).

He put the name of this general on his weapon with which he carried out the massacre of the two mosques, and published a picture of him.

He also passed on this trip to France and was annoyed by its large number of Muslim immigrants, and considered this an "invasion".

Then, in August 2017, he decided to move to New Zealand and train in order to launch an attack on Muslims around the world, but he noticed that it was a country "rich in goals" and decided to implement his plan there.


intellectual orientation

The terrorist did not admit his affiliation with any political movement, but he supports the ideology of the extreme right, adopts an anti-immigrant policy, and asserts that he carried out the attack with personal motives, as he "represents millions of Europeans who aspire to live on their land and practice their own traditions," according to him.

Tarrant was influenced by former US President Donald Trump, whom he considers a "symbol of the rehabilitation of white identity", and was influenced by pro-Trump activist Candace Amber Owens.

Tarrant was inspired by his terrorist attack on the Masonic perpetrator of the "Oslo attacks" Anders Behring Breivik in Norway in 2011, which killed 77 Muslims, most of them boys.

Tarrant has been associated with a number of far-right groups in Europe, including the French and Austrian branches of the Identity Movement, donating between 1,000 and 1,700 euros to each organization between 2017 and 2018.

The "Identity Movement" is a national movement that promotes the theory of "Great Replacement", which sees that the reception of Arab and Muslim immigrants in Europe will cause the white race to be replaced by their Muslim offspring, which poses a threat to European culture under the principle of soft conquest, and calls for an "urgent response before it is too late." According to the owners.

Tarrant's long sitting on the Internet is what led him to the "identity movement" that recruited young people through forums and computer games, portraying its members as victims of historical injustice, brave warriors capable of taking up arms and defending their race.

This theory has spread in Europe, and many far-right politicians belong to this movement, including Eric Zemmour in France (the presidential candidate in the France 2022 elections), and most of them praise the Serbian extremist leader Slobodan Milosevic.


Motives for the massacre

Tarrant also published in his statement the reasons for his perpetration of the massacre, and the first reason was what he said was the large increase in the number of immigrants, the "invading occupiers," as he describes them.

He also said, "Our land will never be for immigrants, and this homeland that was for white men will remain so, and they will never be able to replace our people."

He added that his perpetration of the massacre was in order to avenge the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by "the invaders in European lands throughout history."

He claimed that his crime came in retaliation for an attack in Sweden that occurred in April 2017, as that year was the beginning of the birth of his desire to carry out the attack.

During his tourist trip in Europe, two incidents occurred that reinforced his extremism in 2017, the first of which was the incident in which an Uzbek refugee drove a truck into a crowd of people in Stockholm, Sweden, killing 5 people on April 7.

The second was on May 7 of the same year, after French President Emmanuel Macron defeated anti-immigration French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. Tarrant found that "his feelings fluctuate between intense anger and suffocating despair over the insult of the invasion of France (meaning immigrants)."

Tarrant expressed his desire to target several figures, including then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

On an online forum called "Chan 8" known for welcoming racists, homosexuals and Islamophobes, Tarrant announced his intention to commit an act of terrorism.

The killer's statement used language designed for the Internet, especially for these sites, in order to encourage viewers and like-minded viewers to study and draw inspiration from his ideas in order to spread these concepts on a wide level.


Operation planning

In order to send a message to "the invaders that they are not safe even in the most remote corners of the earth", Tarrant chose New Zealand to commit his terrorist attack, so he moved to New Zealand and rented a "duplex" apartment built after World War II in Dineen.

A month after signing the lease, he applied for a gun license, and according to security procedures, and after the police visited his house, I agreed to sign the application for a license in November 2017, then he bought 4 guns and ammunition.

Although his mother noticed that he was in a suspicious situation and that his life had begun to deviate, after he took out his weapons and bragged in front of her when she visited him, she did nothing because she thought that he might just be practicing a hobby and would not pose a danger to society.

Tarrant did not work in New Zealand, but was moving from the gym to practicing the use of firearms in the shooting ranges near his home south of Dennin, and was a member of the "Bruce Rifle" (closed after the massacre) shooting club in the village of Melbourne, which included some of the extremists, and it is said He has attended some of their meetings.

One of the pioneers of the shooting club (former member of the New Zealand Defense Force Pete Bridal) had told the police that he was concerned about what was being discussed in the club's meetings, which revolved around violence, and considered it an ideal environment for the upbringing of the perpetrators of the murders, but the police considered its members merely old men in Age did not take a stand.

Tarrant chose for his operation the Al-Noor Mosque precisely because there were many visitors, in his desire to carry out his attack on the largest possible number of Muslims, knowing that his first choice was the Dunedin mosque in the south of the country, but he changed his mind.

Tarrant claims that those who target them are not victims "because whoever invades the land of others bears the consequences of his actions."

He admitted that he planned to carry out such an attack two years before the operation, but the decision to carry out in the city of "Christchurch" was made only 3 weeks before the attack.


terrorist massacre

On March 9, 2019, the New Zealand serial killer began carrying out his racist massacre, storming two mosques in the quiet town of Christchurch, killing 51 Muslims while performing Friday prayers, and displaying his crime via a live broadcast on social media for the world to see as it happened.

Tarrant began filming his crime from inside his car under the sound of music, wearing body armor, military uniforms and a helmet, saying, "Let's get this party started."

The song he played was a Serbian-language song referring to Radovan Karadzic, nicknamed the "Bosnia serial killer", a Serbian politician convicted of several crimes, including "genocide", "crimes against humanity" and "violation of the laws of war" against Muslims during the war. Bosnia.

After getting out of the car, he pulled out one of his automatic rifles and several magazines of ammunition, and headed straight for the city's Al Noor mosque, where Friday prayers had just begun.

The shooting did not stop almost throughout the 15-minute video, as he shot everyone he met, chased those fleeing from the mosque, entered the women’s chapel, killed 51 Muslims, and wounded many worshipers.

The statement that Tarrant posted indicates that he was on his way to a third target, a mosque in Ashburton outside Christchurch, before being intercepted by police and arrested from inside his car.

There were false reports of an attack on Christchurch Hospital where survivors were transferred, so the authorities needed to know if the attacker was part of a terrorist network or an individual act, so they decided to close the city, removing roadblocks only to allow workers and schoolchildren to return home at 6 pm in that night.

It was noted after the investigation that he was part of an extremist network on the Internet that encouraged him while he carried out his attack during his live broadcast of the massacre.

Phrases written by the New Zealand attacker on his weapon (social networking sites)

crime tool

The killer filled his weapon with racist phrases and terms that sum up his entire philosophy, including "Turcofagos", the name of 19th-century Greek gangs that launched bloody attacks against the Ottomans, as well as the phrase "Refugees, welcome to hell."

He also wrote on his weapon the phrase “1683 Vienna” in reference to the history of the Battle of Vienna, which the Ottoman Empire lost and put an end to its expansion in Europe, as well as the date of “1571” in reference to the naval battle of Lepanto, which the Ottomans also lost.

Also written on the side of the gun is the number 14 in reference to a 14-word slogan used by white supremacists, as well as Armenian gestures and a phrase mocking a United Nations brochure on how to deal with immigrants.

judgment

Brenton Tarrant was sentenced in August 2021 to life in prison without parole for the murders of 51 people and the attempted murder of 40 others.

The incident was considered the worst shooting incident of its kind in New Zealand's history, and Tarrant is the only criminal in New Zealand who has been designated a terrorist.

During sentencing, Judge Cameron Mander said he would inflict the harshest possible sentence on Tarrant;

Because of his "inhumane" actions.

Mander added at the time, addressing Tarrant, "Your crimes are very serious, and if you are imprisoned until your death, this will not be enough to exhaust the requirements of punishment and conviction."

On November 8, 2022, Brenton Tarrant appealed his life sentence.