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Christchurch mosque attack could only have been prevented 'by chance': Inquiry

Wellington - Royal Commission report says NZ security services placed inappropriate focus on extremism but ignored threat from right-wing terror

New Zealand security services did not focus enough on the threat from right-wing terror in the run-up to last year's Christchurch mosques attack, but could only have prevented the murders "by chance", an inquiry reported Tuesday.

The royal commission — the most powerful judicial probe available under New Zealand law — called for sweeping changes to counter-terrorism operations in response to the white supremacist attack in which 51 Muslim worshippers died.

The 800-page report said spy agencies had placed an "inappropriate" focus on Islamist extremism before the attack and did not sufficiently explore the right-wing terror threat.

But it stopped short of saying authorities could have prevented the massacre, finding that the "fragmentary" information available about lone-wolf shooter Brenton Tarrant prior to the killings was not enough to mark him as a threat.

"There was no plausible way he could have been detected except by chance," said the report on the March 2019 attack, in which Tarrant targeted men, women and children who had gathered for Friday prayers in the South Island city.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern welcomed the review and vowed to look at all 44 recommendations.

She said another major criticism in the report — lax firearms law enforcement that allowed Tarrant to amass an arsenal of military-style semi-automatic weapons — had already been addressed by her government.

"The commission made no findings that these issues would have stopped the attack, but these were both failings nonetheless and for that I apologise," she said.

Tarrant, 30, became the first person in New Zealand to be jailed for life without the prospect of parole in August after pleading guilty to terrorism, 51 counts of murder and 40 of attempted murder.

The commission into New Zealand's worst modern-day massacre was originally due to report in December last year but was delayed first by the sheer volume of responses and then by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Headed by Supreme Court judge William Young and former diplomat Jacqui Caine, it interviewed more than 400 people and received 1,100 submissions.

Among the recommendations, the report says the government should establish a new national intelligence agency.

New Zealand currently has one intelligence agency that focuses on domestic threats and one that focuses on international threats. Often those agencies are focused on immediate events like keeping visiting dignitaries safe. The report recommends establishing a new, well-financed agency that’s more strategic in nature and can focus on developing a counter-terrorism strategy.

Abdigani Ali, a spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Canterbury, told reporters in Christchurch that his community should have been kept safe.

“The report shows that institutional prejudice and unconscious bias exists in the government agencies and needs to change,” he said.

The report details Tarrant’s extensive world travels but also shows he had almost no meaningful interactions with people in New Zealand because he was introverted and didn’t work.

As a child, Tarrant had unsupervised access to the Internet and became interested in video games from the age of six or seven, the report says. He began expressing racist ideas from a young age and told his mother he started using the 4chan internet forum from age 14.

The gunman worked for about three years as a personal trainer at a gym in the Australian town of Grafton, but stopped working after an injury and then used his inheritance to live and travel. He visited dozens of countries around the world, including India, China, Russia, North Korea, and many countries in Africa and Europe.

He moved to New Zealand in 2017 and focused on planning for his attack. The report said he only had superficial interactions with people at a gym and the rifle club where he practised rapid-fire shooting. Yet when needed, Tarrant could present himself to others in a way that didn’t arouse suspicion.