Tarrant
© AAPTarrant has appealed his official status as a terrorist in New Zealand’s High Court.
Christchurch mosque killer Brenton Tarrant has launched a high court appeal to have his designation as a terrorist revoked.

The Australian white supremacist wants the court to review decisions made by the NZ Department of Corrections about his prison conditions, and his designation as a "terrorist entity" under the country's Terrorism Suppression Act.

The judicial review will be heard at the High Court in Auckland on Thursday. He will be representing himself.

Tarrant was in August jailed for life without parole for the murder of 51 people and attempted murder of 40 at Masjid An Nur and Linwood mosque on March 15, 2019.

He is the only person to be designated the status of terrorist in New Zealand.

He is fighting the restrictions he has during his life imprisonment on human rights grounds, according to legal sources who were not cleared to speak on the record.

Under the Corrections Act, everyone in custody is entitled to exercise, bedding, a proper diet, one private visitor a week, a legal adviser, medical treatment, healthcare, mail and telephone calls.

But there are exceptions. Entitlements can be withheld for various reasons including being segregated or in protective custody, health and safety or because it's not practicable.

Victims' families and survivors were notified about the hearing on Wednesday afternoon.

The review has no bearing on the outcome of the criminal case, the sentence imposed or the man's terrorism conviction.

Tarrant is managed behind bars at Auckland Prison by members of a group known as the Prisoner of Extreme Risk directorate.

Brenton Tarrant has become the first person in New Zealand to be sentenced to life without parole after the Christchurch mosque killings.

The directorate, created on July 1, 2019, was set up in response to the massacre and looks after the country's most dangerous inmates.

Corrections national commissioner Rachel Leota previously said it was "made up of staff from a range of disciplines across the organisation and ensures that we have the best intelligence, information, assessment and planning around the management of offenders who present with significant unique risks, which have the potential to cause significant harm or distress, either directly or indirectly".

Few other details about the directorate's work have been revealed, with corrections redacting information in documents because of concerns about divulging "highly sensitive operational detail".


Comment: His terrorist status means the information surrounding the massacre are tightly controlled, and evidently there are details that the government are afraid of being leaked to the public: Cover-up: Royal Commission to suppress evidence in Christchurch terror attack report for 30 years


In August last year Nigel Hampton QC said the mosque shooter's confinement would have to be carefully managed, given the risks of isolation to physical and mental health, including suicide, psychosis, anxiety, depression, fractures, blindness, weakness and weight loss.

It would have to comply with the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment, whose governing body recommended against even short-term solitary confinement.

New Zealand's Bill of Rights protects against torture and cruel, degrading and excessively severe punishments.

In Norway, Anders Breivik, the killer who murdered 77 people in a car bombing in central Oslo and shooting spree on Utoeya island in 2011, claimed his prison conditions, which included being held in isolation, were worse than the death penalty, and a violation of his human rights.

But his years-long legal battle against his treatment came to an end in 2018, when the European Courts of Human Rights rejected his appeal and said its decision was final.