The 32-year-old man who stabbed shoppers in New Zealand yesterday has been shadowed non-stop by police for 53 days. The man had been jailed for three years for terrorism-related offenses but was released in July.
According to Prime Minister Ardern, there were no longer any possibilities to detain the man at that time, although there were still indications that he posed a risk. It was therefore decided to have him followed by a police team of about thirty officers.
Because the police were around when he opened the attack in the Auckland suburb, action was taken within a minute. The man was shot dead by officers. He had already injured seven people, three of them seriously.
Doubts about release
The perpetrator, who entered the country from Sri Lanka on a student visa in 2011, had come to the attention of the judiciary when he made a sympathetic statement on Facebook in 2016 about terrorist attacks.
A year later he was arrested at Auckland airport because he probably wanted to travel to Syria to join Islamic State. A hunting knife and several IS propaganda films were found with him. Although he was then released on bail, he still went to prison for three years in 2018 when he bought a knife.
When he was released under surveillance this year, a court report warned that he still posed a risk, but the judge was unable to prevent his release. “I sincerely hope that the police’s doubts are unjustified,” the judge told the man.
New legislation
It is still unclear why the perpetrator, who was illegally in the country, was not deported when his sentence expired. Prime Minister Ardern said there was a logical reason for this, but the judge had forbidden details about the case to be released.
Ardern went on to say she plans to tighten terror legislation, but acknowledged that new legislation had failed to prevent the attack either. “This man was eager for an attack and seized the opportunity in a supermarket. Those are very difficult circumstances.”
Because the perpetrator used a knife that he had taken from a shelf in the attack, several supermarket chains in the country have decided to remove knives and other sharp objects from their range.
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