More on the Christchurch massacre

Christchurch Terror Attack: Mass Censorship, Mystery Shooters, And The Globetrotting Lone Gunman

SOTT.net,
21 March, 2019

Censorship has been put into effect like never before in the aftermath of the multi-site terror attacks in Christchurch last Friday. There's no other word for what governments and Internet corporations have instituted. New Zealand and Australian Internet Service Providers have been blocking access to video-hosting sites, forums and other websites that mirrored, in part or whole, the 17-minute long video footage 'lone gunman' Brenton Tarrant recorded from a GoPro camera attached to his head-gear, along with footage of the aftermath of the shooting at the Linwood mosque, and copies of Tarrant's 'manifesto'. Media outlets and social media platforms globally have followed suit. The Internet has effectively been 'bleached' of this evidence (though it's not entirely gone, if you're prepared to look hard enough for it). 

Tarrant's video in particular has been "classified by the Chief Censor's Office as objectionable," under a 1993 New Zealand law, meaning Kiwis face prison time and a $10,000 fine for 'downloading a copy of it' or 'distributing' it. The government has been leaning heavily on ISPs to block websites until they have removed it while, globally, several million iterations (including just links to it) have been removed by all media outlets and all social media platforms - and not just by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter; it's also gone from BitChute and similar lesser-known video-hosting platforms. New Zealand Police have also been demanding personal data on users who even discuss Tarrant's 'manifesto' or video.

Though ostensibly done out of consideration for the victims of the attacks and their families, to 'protect children and the vulnerable from seeing these images', and to not 'give the attacker the attention he wants', no such 'clean sweeps' have previously been conducted following the many gruesome mass shootings and bombings in terror attacks around the world, particularly those in non-Western countries. All these years 'ISIS' and affiliated terrorists have enjoyed full use of Western social media platforms to share footage of their crimes - footage which is then typically shown by corporate media outlets, complete with running commentary (just search 'Charlie Hebdo massacre' or 'ISIS beheadings' on YouTube) - but now suddenly it's imperative that all "objectionable materials" relating to this event be excised from global consciousness. Why would that be the case? 

The Censored Video 

As expected, the official narrative has 'collapsed' on a 'lone gunman'. On the one hand, it's a plausible narrative: the whole world saw (or were told about) that which it is now 'illegal' to personally verify; one gunman murdering 42 of the 50 victims at the first mosque. On the other hand, there are clues that he had help doing it. No one can doubt that he is The Killer, but did he plan and carry it out all by himself? 

At timestamp 6:37 in Tarrant's video, we see him shoot dead the first of his victims in the front entrance to the Al Noor mosque. This presumably corresponds to 1:40pm local time, which remains unchanged in the consensus timeline as the moment shots were first fired. The next five minutes are horrific to say the least. Tarrant unloads magazine after magazine into everyone who could not escape the mosque, briefly exits into the car park, then returns to fire additional shots into every single slain person in the main room. He does this so methodically that you're left wondering whether he had prior experience doing this kind of thing. He is known to have had target practice at a gun club, but is that really the extent of his training? 

The grey Subaru Tarrant drove

By 12:30 in the video, Tarrant is driving away, at high speed, north on Deans Avenue, then east on Bealey Avenue. According to Google Maps it takes 11 mins to travel the 7kms by car from one mosque to the other. His video ends abruptly at 17 minutes, so we don't see him make it to the second mosque - which is odd considering his obvious intention to broadcast or at least record his complete 'mission'. By this point we've seen him driving for 4.5 minutes since leaving the Al Noor mosque and he has made it as far as the intersection of Bealey and Fitzgerald, so he still has almost the same distance to travel to reach the Linwood mosque on Linwood Avenue. This means, presumably, that the shooting there began no earlier than 15 minutes after it began at the Al Noor mosque, at 1:55pm. 

Tarrant was in custody 36 minutes after Christchurch police received their first call about a shooting at a mosque, which New Zealand's top cop - Police Commissioner Mike Bush - says occurred one minute after the first shots were fired. He was finally stopped on Brougham Street, between the intersections of Strickland Street and Scott Street, which is almost the same distance again from the Linwood mosque. This implies that Tarrant - from the moment he opened fire at the Al Noor mosque - carried out his attacks at both locations inside 37 minutes, ending with his arrest at 2:17pm. 

Three crime scenes: the mass shootings at these two mosques, and the location of Tarrant's arrest.

In Tarrant's video, you can clearly hear him speaking with someone as he's tearing east along Bealey Avenue. It's not Tarrant muttering to himself, and it's not Tarrant 'speaking to his audience': he is having a one-on-one conversation with someone about how the massacre at the Al Noor mosque went down. The other person's voice - of a lower tone than Tarrant's - though faint, can be heard at one point, and whatever is said prompts Tarrant to laugh and respond. Among the comments made by Tarrant in this conversation, he says "there's time for the fuel," presumably in reference to whatever they both knew was planned beforehand for the red jerry-cans in the trunk of Tarrant's car. There may not have been someone present in the car with Tarrant, but that doesn't rule out a conversation with someone else over car speakerphone and/or via earpiece. 

Linwood Mosque 

In contrast to the clear video footage showing what happened at the Al Noor mosque, what happened at the smaller Linwood mosque is murky. All agree that the death toll there would have been higher but for the fact that the attacker (for this event hiding his face with a mask or balaclava) was confronted and chased away. One version is that 48-year-old 'hero refugee' Abdul Aziz, despite being unarmed, managed to at least temporarily distract and limit the gunman to shooting at worshipers from outside the building, rather than entering it, by "throwing a credit card machine at him." Once the gunman was back in his car, Aziz says he saw him off by throwing a shotgun (which the gunman had dropped earlier) at the car's windscreen "like an arrow," which, he said, "shattered the windscreen" (it didn't), and spooked him into driving away, then Aziz chased after him on foot down the driveway and back onto Linwood Avenue. 

Linwood Islamic Centre, aka the Linwood mosque, a small building at the end of a 50m driveway off the north side of Linwood Avenue

Other eyewitnesses describe the gunman being confronted by an unnamed worshiper inside the small building. One eyewitness to this, Faisal Sayed, describes at the end of this interview how a "young guy" tackled the gunman from behind, which caused him to drop his weapon, flee the building and escape the grounds in his car. This account is supported by another eyewitness, Syed Mazharuddin, who told the New Zealand Herald:

"The young guy who usually takes care of the mosque... he saw an opportunity and pounced on [the gunman] and took his gun. The hero tried to chase and he couldn't find the trigger in the gun... he ran behind him but there were people waiting for him in the car and he fled."

Is this a different hero? Two different gunmen perhaps? These two versions of the event may not conflict; they could, for example, be describing two confrontations against one gunman by two different people in sequence, but what is most interesting is Mazharuddin's closing statement about "people waiting" in the car the gunman escaped in. 

Both accounts agree that the attacker(s) at the Linwood mosque fled in a car, so what are we to make of these statements from the manager of a business located nearby?

A second shooting happened at a mosque in the Linwood area of the city.

Witnesses said they heard multiple gunshots around 1.45pm.

Mark Nichols, manager of Premium Tyres and Auto in Linwood, said he saw a gunman run past his shop around 45 minutes ago.

He heard five gunshots, and he believed the activity was centred around the nearby Linwood Masjid mosque.

He saw two injured people carried on stretchers past his shop. Both appeared to be alive.

"I seen a guy with a gun running up the road. He's been firing about five shots, I think we heard," Nichols said.

"It might have been a shotgun. I didn't get a good look at it, I just cleared off.

To pass the entrance to Premium Tyres (situated on the opposite side of Linwood Avenue) on foot, Tarrant would have to have at least temporarily exited his car, but Aziz says he witnessed the car speed away on Linwood Avenue when he chased after it down the mosque's driveway. 

The Linwood Islamic Centre, a small mosque, is set back from Linwood Avenue. Premium Tyres is across the Avenue, with its storefront facing southeast, away from the mosque. Someone passing on foot needs to cover at least 110 meters

Another eyewitness reported seeing two police cars cordon off nearby Harrow Street, located about 1km south of the Linwood mosque. There they arrested another man, images of which the New Zealand Herald has apparently seen though they do not appear to be in the public domain: 

New Zealand Herald report, 15th March 2019

Could this have been the armed man seen running past Premium Tyres, east on Linwood Avenue? There has been no follow-up from the police about this arrest. 

Click to enlarge

Double-Trouble at Tarrant Arrest 

Though he has since said just one IED (improvised explosive device) was found in just one car, recall that Commissioner Bush specifically"confirmed", at his his first press conference 3 hours after the Linwood attack ended, that "several IEDs attached to cars have been made safe now." You don't say, much less confirm, 'several' anything, unless you have in mind at least two, and more likely three or higher, vehicles with bombs in them. Emphasizing his point, he subsequently commented: "This speaks to the seriousness of what occurred." 

A Guardian stringer cited police sources as saying they were searching for three people in this area, while a local man said "a white van" was "at the center of police focus." One eyewitness to Tarrant's arrest on Brougham Street reported that a second man was in Tarrant's silver Subaru, and that this man escaped from police at the scene: 

Statements given to newsroom.co.nz, March 15th 2019

On the day of the attacks, it was reported that - in addition to a bomb having been defused in Tarrant's Subaru - a second bomb had been defused in a white vehicle on Strickland Street. This incident was later conflated with Tarrant's arrest, apparently because of this location's proximity to Brougham Street. However, we know from this local media report that there was indeed at least one other separate incident in this immediate area, south of the city center, that afternoon: a different man was arrested here after being stopped driving a 'white sedan'. A modified long gun, apparently a shotgun fitted with a silencer, was found in his possession: 

© David Williams / newsroom.co.nz
The man arrested on Strickland Street

© David Williams / newsroom.co.nz
The shotgun found in his possession

Close-up

The authorities are not saying anything about who this man on Strickland Street was, nor who the man arrested on Harrow Street was, thus leaving it implied that they are from among the four people police confirmed arresting in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Besides Tarrant, the three others have since been charged with offenses, though Commissioner Bush insists that none were involved in the attacks. Two - a man and a woman - were charged with illegal possession of firearms, while an 18-year-old was charged with "publishing objectionable publications" on the basis that he shared a link to Tarrant's video and, allegedly, sometime prior to the attacks, published an image of the Al Noor mosque with the caption 'target acquired'. 

Simultaneous Active Shooter Training & Foreign Military Snipers 

One of the hallmarks of false-flag events is simultaneous drills or training events being held in the city for emergency response personnel. New Zealand is one of only a handful of remaining countries in the world where the police do not generally carry firearms. But when Tarrant's car was rammed by police, the two arresting officers were 'lucky' to intercept him. Their boss, Senior Sergeant Pete Stills, recounted the fortuitous intervention to the New Zealand Herald:

"They were actually training when the call came through that there was an active armed offender in Christchurch. They had their work vehicles there with them with firearms in them. They operationalised themselves and got into one car, they decided to skirt the city, they thought that's what the offender would do - rather than drive through the CBD [central business district]. They were driving on Brougham Street because they thought, if he'd just been to Linwood, that's a route he might take. We practice for this stuff - to be honest, it was lucky two officers with that amount of service and experience were there."

The training session was "on how to deal with armed offenders," or active shooter situations, and was being held in a facility at the nearby Princess Margaret Hospital. This meant police officers did not have to first meet up at their stations and arm themselves, which enabled tactical response units - some in plain clothes - to respond in unusually fast time to the reports of shots fired at multiple locations. New Zealand Police Association President Chris Cahill was proud of his colleagues, saying: "Any police force in the world - to get to the scene in six minutes, a specialist team there in 10 - that would be a success." On the simultaneous active shooter training for Christchurch officers, Cahill said it was a "hell of a coincidence." 

And then there's this:

NZSAS soldiers in Christchurch for snipers event responded to mosque terror attack 

Some of the world's most deadly sharpshooters were in Christchurch when New Zealand's worst ever terror attack unfolded on Friday, with NZSAS taking to the streets to help hunt the rampaging mosque shooter.

Snipers from the New Zealand military, as well as professional snipers from Australia and Asian countries, had been at the Defence Force shooting range at West Melton, 25kms west of the city, the Herald has been told.

When the massacre unfolded, they were sprung into action and understood to have been granted special powers to take up arms in order to protect the public.

NZSAS soldiers were photographed with weapons and balaclavas masking their face near the Al Noor Mosque by Hagley Park where a gunman stormed Friday prayer and shot dead more than 40 people. [...]

Others responded to a callout at Papanui High School which was feared to have been under attack too.

Heavily-armed masked officers were seen travelling in civilian rental vehicles with police on Friday afternoon.

New Zealand Police special tactics group (STG) officers were also on the frontline.

The country's top police units and top military units - in addition to 'foreign snipers' - just so happened to be in Christchurch, training, when the attack occurred

The presence of such heavy firepower in the form of New Zealand's most elite police and military units can indeed be seen as a "hell of a coincidence." What this overlooks, however, is the flip-side to coincidental arrangements like this: the presence of 'foreign sharpshooters' and 'elite military marksmen' on the scene provides ideal cover for 'intelligent' perpetrators to blend in, present credible ID, provide plausible reasons for being on or near the scene, and even 'pull rank' on junior officers inexperienced in handling firearms, much less responding to an intentionally chaotic multi-site terror attack. Here's how it could happen... 

Mystery Gunmen 

In my previous article, I referenced the arrest of this man outside the Papanui High School: 

The man arrested outside Papanui High School

He has since been cleared of any involvement, and named as local 30-year-old man Stephen Millar. In statements he made to the New Zealand Herald, Millar says he was at the school to pick up his 13-year-old brother-in-law, and just happens to be fond of wearing camouflage clothing. As far as the narrative is concerned, this clears up any confusion about the presence of gunmen at or near this high school. The point they miss, however, is that a heavy police response was drawn to this school - miles from either mosque - just as the shooting sprees came to an end. 

A video recorded on a bystander's phone - time unknown - shows two other men armed with long guns outside the entrance to the high school that day, with one of them seen entering the premises: 

Both men are armed with long guns of some kind, and are wearing what appear to be backpacks or vests

The bystander who recorded this footage was situated on the opposite side of Langdons Road, in a carpark at the back of the Papanui Library, facing the entrance to Papanui High school, which means the armed men's location when they are filmed is here: 

Papanui students and staff said their school 'went into lockdown' when an alarm went off "at about 2.30pm." It's unknown what prompted that, but a police helicopter with a marksman hanging out of it was soon seen "circling very low overhead," for about one hour, while armed police - some in uniform, some not - searched the school grounds and surrounding streets on foot. 

© Adam Bradley
Armed police - some in uniform and some in 'civvies' - on Langdons Road in Papanui

Although it's plausible that the two armed men outside the school in the above video were members of a plain-clothed tactical response unit, the rapidly-empowered SAS snipers or 'foreign marksmen', the fact remains that a significant armed response was deemed necessary to investigate a reported threat at a location miles away from what were, by this time, the two known major crimes scenes (the mosques). In addition, this armed response continued for 1 hour from 2.30pm to 3.30pm. Recall that Tarrant was arrested at 2.17pm. If there was never any reason to presume that more than one shooter was involved (because there was officially only one), and the single shooter was already in custody, why would this kind of response have occurred? 

Papanui High School is situated 6kms north of the Al Noor mosque, and over 7kms from the Linwood mosque. Incredibly though, that isn't the furthest location to which armed police responded. The New Zealand Herald reported that

Christchurch resident Mandy Rooney was trapped in her car within metres of a mosque in Bishopdale.

She said she tried to get out of the car to see what was going on but was ordered back into her vehicle by armed police.

"They have their guns up and are walking around scoping through them," she said.

"It is chaos. People have been trying to drive away and are just crashing into other vehicles."

The small mosque in Bishopdale is called the Rasullulah Centre and is located a further 3kms northeast of Papanui High school, or 7.5kms, by car, northeast of the Al Noor mosque. 

In addition to all schools, all hospitals in Christchurch were placed under armed police guard, something that was probably prompted by someone reporting gunfire at Christchurch Hospital in the city center. Similar security responses occurred beyond Christchurch, with the New Zealand military conducting three controlled explosions after bomb calls were made to Auckland's main train station hours after Tarrant's arrest. 

This pattern of police being drawn out across a city is reminiscent of what occurred immediately following the Las Vegas terror attack, when Las Vegas police and Henderson SWAT were redirected to casino resorts as far north as two miles up the Vegas Strip to investigate reports of gunfire at those venues. Clearly, police resources become strained by having to investigate each incident. When, in addition, many of the police are not in uniform, but are sporting powerful weapons, we can see how additional gunmen or 'spotters', party to the attacks, and intent on escape, could easily 'blend in'. 

World Traveller 

For "just an ordinary, working class, 28-year-old white man" who worked in a gym, Tarrant sure got around. New Zealand and Australian authorities claim he had not once before come up on their radar, despite Tarrant's claim that he made contact with jailed Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, is highly fluent in the rhetoric of extremist websites, obtained a 'Category A' firearms license soon after relocating to New Zealand in 2017, and has supported himself for the last 8 years by 'investing in BitCoin'. On that last score alone, the NSA keeps close tabs on every BitCoin user, globally. New Zealand is party to the Five Eyes global surveillance and security system, so what the NSA and British GCHQ sees, Kiwi intelligence sees. 

New Zealand security services are not telling what they know, but other governments have taken the lead in highlighting Tarrant's travels to some 'unique' global hotspots, where terrorists and spooks are known to mingle. Turkey's government in particular has asked Australia and New Zealand's governments what light they can shed on Tarrant's multiple trips to Turkey in 2016, one of which lasted 43 days (and two of which, they mentioned, occurred either side of the attempted coup against president Erdogan in July that year). Turkish media outlet TRT World quoted a Turkish government source as saying that they "believe" Tarrant was in Turkey "to carry out a terror attack and/or an assassination." 

Over a period of about three years, Tarrant also visited the Balkans; Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan, which borders Kashmir; the Wakhan Corridor, the sliver of Afghanistan that connects to the Xinjiang region of western China; Xinjiang itself; North Korea, and Israel. 

Erdogan's government may simply be capitalizing on the Christchurch event's 'evil white European' theme, or answering Tarrant's calls in his 'manifesto' for Erdogan to be assassinated and for the Turks to be 'driven out of Europe to the other side of the Bosphorus', or they may know something we don't - as they did with the Saudi murder of Khashoggi. They certainly aren't alone in suspecting that Tarrant had help carrying out his mass murder, with Erdogan yesterday telling a crowd of supporters on the campaign trail for upcoming local elections: "They are testing us from 16,500km away, from New Zealand, with the messages they are giving from there. This isn't an individual act, this is organized." 

Update Friday 22 March 2019 

Police Commissioner Mike Bush has since adjusted the official timeline, stating at a press conference on Wednesday 20 March that the police stopped Tarrant 21 minutes after they received the first emergency call of shooting at the Al Noor mosque at 1:41pm, and explaining that the earlier time he gave of 36 minutes was actually a reference to how long it took to put Tarrant in custody:

"Within 10 minutes, the Armed Offenders Squad were on the scene ready to respond," Bush said.

"Within 21 minutes, the person that is now in custody was arrested, 21 minutes from when we were first notified."

Bush acknowledged this was a change of information, "I have previously said the offender was in our custody within 36 minutes," he said.

"I have now been made aware that, while we had the offender in custody at the Justice Precinct within 36 minutes, it in fact only took 21 minutes from the first 111 call for the offender to be apprehended at the roadside by the two officers."

Recall that Tarrant opened fire at the Al Noor mosque at 1:40pm, which corresponds to 06:38 in his video. When we last see him at the end of his video (timestamp 16:55), he has reached the intersection of Bealey and Fitzgerald Avenues at 1:50pm, 9 minutes after police received the first emergency call. 

According to the new timeline then, this leaves Tarrant just 11 minutes to drive the remaining 3kms to Linwood mosque, open fire on worshippers there for several (4 max.) minutes, then drive another 5kms until his arrest on Brougham Street. That is perhaps possible for someone with training, but it's still very tight... 

The 21 minute timeline