{"id":76291,"date":"2026-02-09T10:07:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T01:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/09\/christchurch-shooter-brenton-tarrant-conviction-appeal-guilty-plea"},"modified":"2026-02-09T12:17:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T03:17:07","slug":"christchurch-gunman-seeks-to-appeal-convictions-and-withdraw-guilty-plea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76291","title":{"rendered":"Christchurch gunman seeks to appeal convictions and withdraw guilty plea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian white supremacist tells NZ court he was suffering from \u2018nervous exhaustion\u2019 when he entered his guilty plea in March 2020 <\/p>\n

The Australian white supremacist who murdered 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch<\/a> in 2019, in the worst mass shooting<\/a> in the New Zealand\u2019s history, has asked a court to discard his guilty pleas, claiming harsh prison conditions had affected his mental health and compelled him to admit to the crimes.<\/p>\n

Brenton Tarrant pleaded guilty in March 2020 to 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and a terrorism charge, after initially saying he would defend the charges. In August 2020, Tarrant became the first person in New Zealand<\/a> under current laws to be sentenced to life in prison without the chance of ever walking free.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australian white supremacist tells NZ court he was suffering from \u2018nervous exhaustion\u2019 when he entered his guilty plea in March 2020 The Australian white supremacist who murdered 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch in 2019, in the wors…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2286,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,213,56,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-christchurch-shooting","category-new-zealand","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2286"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76291"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76296,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76291\/revisions\/76296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}