New Zealand: monitoring of the far right after the massacre – ElSol.com.ar – Diario de Mendoza, Argentina

The Islamophobic attack in New Zealand last Friday, which left 50 dead and 50 wounded, forces intelligence and security services to rethink vigilance people and groups of the far right.

"There are many questions to answer, the next lesson is that no country is immune from an extreme right-wing attack"said the law expert at the University of Waikato, Al Gillespie.

The attack was attributed to Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian who he was not under the supervision of the authorities and whose shares have forced security to go from low to high in New Zealand.

Tarrant relayed the attack for 17 minutes and, shortly before the attack, published a 74-page manifesto broadcasting some social networks. full of invectives against the Muslims and in what is defined as "racist" and "fascist".

L & # 39; badailant He has no history or caused any problems to his Dunedin neighbors, located about 400 kilometers south of Christchurch, the slaughterhouse, where it was created after arriving in the country in 2017.

In November of the same year, he obtained the weapons license and He immediately started buying the five weapons that he would use during the attack, for which he is also prepared by targeting shooting clubs.

The mbadacre has sparked controversy over the role of intelligence and security agencies and critics of the dynamics of Five Eyes, the intelligence alliance that New Zealand shares with Australia, Canada, the United States, the United States. United Kingdom and the United States.

The head of the government's Communications Security Office, Andrew Hampton, explained that his agency "No information relating to terrorist attacks has been collected or received by the partners."

Three weeks before the attack on the mosques, Rebecca Kitteridge, director of the New Zealand Intelligence and Security Service (NZSIS), told a parliamentary committee: The terrorist threat in the country was low and the number of people under surveillance varied between 30 and 40.

But Nobody in New Zealand, much less in Christchurch, expected an attack of this magnitude.in a global context where surveillance focuses on Islamic extremists, gang violence and, in the case of the oceanic country, Maori nationalism.

"Far-right extremism was on the list, but it was not a priority," said Gillespie, who attributed the origin of this ideology to the country in the 1930s. and reached its peak in the 90s with the appearance of groups of "heads" shaved. "

Asked about the far right now in New Zealand, the academic said that the proportion of neo-Nazis intending to commit acts of violence such as those on March 15 in Christchurch "is very low".

"But in terms of a wider community of those who actively believe in the ideology of the far right, there are probably a few hundred, and around it, thousands of people having racist ideas, "he said.

The right-wing ideology attracts white working-clbad youth such as Tarrant, originally from Australia, a country that has secretive groups like Antipode Resistance, which reveres Adolf Hitler and advocates white supremacy.

New Zealand is considering to investigate the intelligence agencies' reaction to attacks on Al Noor and Linwood mosques, so that "this never happens again", as announced by the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.

The authorities fear that the attacks will generate "imitators" not only of neo – Nazis, but also of other types of extremists, said Gillespie, pointing out that the aggression of mosques "He could have empowered the far right."

For Gillespie, who in 2016 called for greater gun control to prevent mbadacres within a parliamentary committee, the key "is gun control", a reform that the prime minister is considering. 39, announce the details before next Monday.