Friday, March 15, 2019

New Zealand Mosque Gunman ‘Inspired by Balkan Nationalists’

SManalysis

Maja Zivanovic Belgrade

BIRN March 15, 2019

A gunman who killed 49 people in a terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand is believed to be an admirer of Balkan nationalists and played a song honouring Radovan Karadzic before opening fire.

An injured person is loaded in an ambulance following a shooting resulting in multiple fatalities and injuries at the Masjid Al Noor in Christchurch, New Zealand on Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE/Martin Hunter NEW ZEALAND OUT

A Facebook user with the name Brenton Tarrant – the man who reportedly killed dozens of people in a terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch on Friday morning – posted pictures of Balkan nationalist symbols online and a statement criticising US involvement in Kosovo.

A video also showed that before the shooting, the gunman played a song honouring Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic, whose final verdict for genocide and war crimes is due to be delivered next week.

9:01 AM - Mar 15, 2019

Ahead of the killings, the user of the Brenton Tarrant account posted a 73-page ‘manifesto’ which said the motive for the attack was to “create fear”, and included anti-migrant hate speech, calls for killings of Muslims, and white supremacist rhetoric.

The text also contained a section about the Kosovo conflict.

“Balkanization will also reduce the USA’s ability to project power globally, and thereby ensure that never again can such a situation as the US involvement in Kosovo ever occur again (where US/NATO forces fought beside Muslims and slaughtered Christian Europeans attempting to remove there Islamic occupiers from Europe),” it said.

NATO has been leading peacekeeping operations in Kosovo since June 1999 after its campaign of air strikes to end Serbia’s military campaign against ethnic Albanian rebels.

Pictures showing weaponry used in the shooting were also marked with the name of Montenegrin military leader Marko Miljanov Popovic, who led his tribe in the fight against the Ottoman Empire.

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