Image: BBC
Faizel Patel – 08/12/2020
An inquiry into the New Zealand Masaajid attack has found a series of failures concluding the tragedy was unpreventable.
BBC and the New Zealand Herald reports the inquiry was launched after white supremacist Brenton Tarrant killed 51 Muslims at two masaajid in March 2019.
Terrant was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The judge called his actions “inhuman”, saying he had “showed no mercy”.
The inquiry found Terrant had been able to accumulate a massive trove of weapons, with authorities failing to enforce proper checks on firearms licences and overly focussed on Muslims and terrorism.
However the inquiry found that correcting these failures would not have stopped the Australian national from carrying out the attack.
The clues discovered by police after the massacre including his steroid abuse, a hospital admission after Terrant accidentally shot himself, and visits to far-right websites would not have proved enough to predict the attack.
The imam of the Al Noor Masjid, one of the two places of worship targeted says the report confirmed that authorities had been overly suspicious of the Muslim community instead of protecting it.
“We’ve known for a long time that the Muslim community has been targeted with hate speech and hate crimes – this report shows that we are right. The report shows that institutional prejudice and unconscious bias exists in government agencies and that needs to change.”
The Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand criticised the report for what they said was a lack of transparency.
“There are multiple areas of evidence that have not been investigated, and questions raised by IWCNZ have been ignored.”
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Police Commissioner Andrew Coster have apologised for the failings saying while nothing could have stopped the attack, there were still failings at a high level.
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