Christchurch mosque shootings accused Brenton Tarrant appears in court on murder charge
Updated
The man charged over the Christchurch mosque shootings has appeared in court and been remanded in custody until April 5.
Key points: Armed police officers were on hand as Brenton Tarrant made a brief appearance
He has been charged with one count of murder, but police will be filing more charges
Mr Tarrant had a gun licence which allowed him to legally obtain weapons
In a brief appearance on Saturday morning, 28-year-old Australian man Brenton Harrison Tarrant did not apply for bail or for the suppression of his name.
Handcuffed and wearing a prison robe, he was not required to speak, and appeared calm during his three-minute appearance, gazing around a packed courtroom.
As he was being brought into court he made a white power gesture.
Mr Tarrant was charged with one count of murder. Further charges will be laid.
Armed police officers were on hand and nearly 50 reporters had packed the courtroom in downtown Christchurch.
The judge barred members of the public from entering the courtroom "for reasons of public safety".
The attack, labelled terrorism by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, was the worst ever peacetime mass killing in New Zealand and prompted the country to raise its security threat level to high.
Armed police were also deployed at several locations in New Zealand cities, unusual in a country where levels of gun violence are low.
Ms Ardern has flagged changing the country's gun laws amid revelations Mr Tarrant had a gun licence that allowed him to legally obtain weapons, and said security officers would be stationed at mosques throughout New Zealand in the foreseeable future.
She said he had travelled extensively in the past four years, spending time only sporadically in New Zealand, had no criminal history and was not on any watchlists in New Zealand or Australia.
Mr Tarrant was "mobile", had two other firearms and it "absolutely was his intention to continue with the attack", she said, reiterating that he was apprehended by police within 36 minutes from the first call to emergency services.
Two other people remain in custody.
Australian authorities assisting with investigation
Ms Ardern said the Government was liaising closely with its Australian counterparts, and that New Zealand security agencies had been asked to examine a "raft of issues" including gun laws, the rise of right-wing extremism and whether or not authorities should have been aware of Mr Tarrant before the attacks.
"This individual should have been someone that the authorities were aware of and were proactively already focused on," she said.
"Those are the exact questions that we have asked and that the agencies are working on."
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said local authorities were providing "significant assistance" with the police investigation, and support had been made available for the Muslim community.
He said the issue reached "well beyond the borders of New Zealand and Australia".
"These right-wing extremist views, white supremacist, white separatist views are not the flu," he said.
"These sentiments have, sadly, existed in Australia for hundreds of years.
"Hatred, bigotry, racism, these are things that we do stand out against and we always seek to combat."
Mr Morrison said comments made by independent senator Fraser Anning about the mosque attacks would be the subject of a bipartisan censure motion when Federal Parliament returned next month.
Authorities working to return victims to families
Ms Ardern said authorities were working to get the bodies of those killed in the attacks out of the mosques and returned to their families so that burials could begin.
She said the main focus was assisting with repatriation "in a way that is consistent with the Muslim faith, while taking into account these unprecedented circumstances and the obligations to the coroner".
She said ethnic liaison officers were working to support the community, and that police were hoping to have all bodies removed from the mosques by the end of Saturday.
"At Hagley Park, the number one focus really was on identification of those who were still in the mosque, the timeline for when those individuals will be removed from the mosque," she said.
"The hope is that they will have all bodies removed by the end of the day and, of course, as I said, the burial process.
"That's an incredibly important part of the Muslim faith, and police are familiar with that."
11 people remain in intensive care
Greg Robertson, the chief of surgery at Christchurch Hospital, said surgeons worked in 12 operating theatres through the night to treat some of the 48 people admitted to hospital.
Thirty-nine people remain hospital, with 11 in the intensive care unit.
Dr Robertson said they ranged in ages from the very young to the elderly, but the majority were men in their 30s and 40s.
He said their gunshot injuries ranged from "relatively superficial soft tissue injuries" to more complex ones involving the chest, abdomen and head.
Dr Robertson said the experience gained during the 2011 earthquake meant the hospital had the ability to deal with mass casualty events.
Dozens of people laid flowers at cordons near both mosques in the South Island city, which is still rebuilding after the earthquake.
A memorial site has also been set up in the botanical gardens near the hospital where many of the injured are being treated.
The 49 victims include citizens from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.
ABC/AP
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, terrorism, courts-and-trials, new-zealand
First posted
An Australian, , aged 28, appeared in  District Court, New Zealand yesterday, charged with one count of murder pertaining to a  on Friday, which caused the death of at least 50 people. Judge Paul Kellar ordered the accused remain in custody until his next court appearance on April 5.

Police alleged the accused performed two attacks. The first attack reportedly was in  at about 13:40 local time (0040 ), which left at least 42 people dead. The second attack reportedly was in , killing at least eight people, on the same day. Brenton Tarrant did not apply for bail. Further charges may be laid in the future, police said.

Police arrested the accused in the neighborhood of Strickland Street, 36 minutes after the mass shooting in Al Noor Mosque according to police. After his arrest on Friday, Brenton stayed in the Christchurch central police station overnight before appearing in court on the next day.

Brenton Tarrant had a valid gun licence allowing him to buy weapons, ABC reported. According to New Zealand Prime Minister , Brenton had a licence for the five firearms he allegedly used for the attack — two semi-automatic, two shotguns, and one lever-action. Professor Greg Barton, Chair In Global Islamic Politics in the Faculty of Arts and Education at the , said "The attacker was using a couple of guns, one was a shotgun, one was an  — that's the so-called civilian equivalent of the . It's an ". The authorities seized these firearms.

Prime Minister Ardern said at a press conference yesterday morning the gun laws should be changed. She said, "I have instructed  Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Coordination to report to Cabinet on Monday on these events with a view to strengthening our systems on a range of fronts including, but not limited to, firearms, border controls, enhanced information-sharing with Australia, and any practice reinforcement of our watchlist processes."

Brenton also allegedly released an anti-Muslim document online, outlining political motivation, prior to the murders. Social media have been struggling to censor the alleged gunman's videos of the murder, according to reports.