New Zealander jailed for sharing mosque shooting video

AFP  |  Wellington 

A man was jailed for 21 months on Tuesday for distributing gruesome livestream video of the attacks that killed 51 Muslim worshippers, reported.

Arps pleaded guilty to two charges of distributing objectionable material for sharing footage that was livestreamed to during the attack.

District Court heard Arps distributed the raw footage to about 30 people and had another version that was modified to include crosshairs and a "kill count", reported.

"This was in effect a hate crime against the Muslim community," said.

He said it was "particularly cruel" to share the video in the days after the attacks, when relatives were still waiting to hear of their loved ones.

O'Driscoll found that Arps had set out to "glorify" the deaths of Muslims and any punishment other than imprisonment was inappropriate, reported.

New Zealand's censor classified the video from the shooting as objectionable content soon after the shooting, making sharing the footage a crime punishable by up to 14 years in jail.

Shanks also outlawed publication of the rambling "manifesto" the shooter posted online before the attacks, saying it was intended to inspire "murder and terrorism".

Arps, a self-described white supremacist, was convicted in 2016 of offensive behaviour for leaving a pig's at the Al Noor mosque, one of those that was targeted in the mass shooting, Newshub reported.

Tarrant last week pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges, as well as 51 counts of murder and 40 of attempted murder.

He was committed to stand trial in May next year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Tue, June 18 2019. 08:10 IST