New Zealand mosque shooter seeks to discard his guilty pleas, saying prison made him irrational

The man who killed 51 Muslim worshipers at two mosques in New Zealand’s deadliest mass shooting told an appeals court Monday that he felt forced to admit to the crimes because of “irrationality” due to harsh prison conditions, as he sought to have his guilty pleas discarded. A panel of three judges at the Court of Appeal in Wellington will hear five days of evidence about Brenton Tarrant’s claim that he was not fit to plead to the terrorism, murder and attempted murder charges he faced after the 2019 attack in the city of Christchurch. The Australian man, a self-declared white supremacist, migrated to New Zealand with a view to committing the massacre, which he planned in detail.