Brenton Tarrant shot dead 51 Muslim worshippers, including children, at two Christchurch mosques in 2019.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Published On 30 Apr 2026<\/span>30 Apr 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Australian white supremacist killer Brenton Tarrant has lost an appeal to overturn his conviction and sentence for shooting dead 51 people at two New Zealand mosques in 2019, court documents show.<\/p>\n New Zealand\u2019s \u200cCourt of Appeal denied Tarrant\u2019s \u2060\u2060appeal on Thursday, ruling that his attempt to overturn his guilty plea for the country\u2019s deadliest mass shooting was \u201cutterly devoid of merit\u201d.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The 35-year-old had admitted to carrying out the mass shooting before being sentenced to life in prison in August 2020.<\/p>\n Tarrant lodged an appeal in February, claiming that \u201ctorturous and inhumane\u201d detention conditions during his trial made him incapable of making rational decisions when he pleaded guilty to 51 charges of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and one charge of committing a terrorist \u2060attack over the 2019 mass shooting.<\/p>\n Tarrant, who is serving life in prison without parole for killing Muslim worshippers at the Al Noor mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch on March 15, 2019, livestreamed his attack for 17 minutes.<\/p>\n He had also published an online manifesto before carrying out the atrocity, which targeted children, women and the elderly.<\/p>\n Local media outlet The Post reported that the three-judge panel, in their ruling released on Thursday, said that they had taken two lines of enquiry, one on Tarrant\u2019s state of mind at the time of his guilty plea and whether his pleas were voluntary.<\/p>\n The judges said the court did \u201cnot accept Mr Tarrant\u2019s evidence about his mental state\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were inconsistencies in Mr Tarrant\u2019s own evidence, and his evidence is at odds with the detailed observations of prison authorities and the assessments of mental health professionals at the time of him entering his pleas,\u201d the judges said.<\/p>\n The judges found that Tarrant\u2019s guilty pleas were voluntary, and \u201che was not coerced or pressured in any way to plead guilty\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that he was not suffering any significant psychological impacts as a result of his prison conditions at the time he pleaded guilty,\u201d the court said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe facts concerning Mr Tarrant\u2019s offending are beyond dispute. He has not identified any arguable defence, or indeed any defence known to the law.\u201d<\/p>\n Lawyers representing the survivors and families of Tarrant\u2019s victims told national broadcaster RNZ that the court\u2019s decision had been a \u201chuge relief\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe families, and frankly all of us, will be spared the trauma of reliving the 15th of March all over again in a trial,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a huge relief that the difficult and often unsupported journey families are on will not now be added to by the great burden of a new trial. It would have been unimaginably traumatic.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Brenton Tarrant shot dead 51 Muslim worshippers, including children, at two Christchurch mosques in 2019. Published On 30 Apr 202630 Apr 2026 Australian white supremacist killer Brenton Tarrant has lost an appeal to overturn his conviction and sentence for shooting dead 51 people at two New Zealand mosques in 2019, court documents show. New Zealand\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/2017-06-08T131939Z_1189275883_RC11B0FE7F20_RTRMADP_3_GULF-QATAR-JAZEERA-1714943623.jpg?resize=96%2C96&quality=80)
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