
New Zealand First Party leader, Winston Peters, has levelled accusations against Dame Jacinda Ardern, claiming she has been dishonest about the details concerning the Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019.
Peters continues to stand behind his statements, asserting ardently that the Prime Minister’s Office was privy to specific information regarding the locations of the attacks beforehand. This contradicts Ardern’s assertions that there was no specific intelligence about the imminent threat.
In his recent statement, Peters alleges that unambiguous details about the attack locations were available to the Prime Minister’s Office ahead of the event. However, he claims that the Prime Minister misleadingly stated that the police were hindered from intervening due to lack of precise information and that there was no warning given to the mosques.
In opposition to Peters’ claims, the Royal Commission, appointed to investigate the attacks, established that the email received did not specify targets. It was only on the eighth page of a 74-page manifesto attached to the email that specific mosques in Christchurch, Linwood, and Ashburton were identified as potential targets.
The Commission concluded that none of the information held by public sector agencies could or should have anticipated the attack. The email received by the Parliamentary Service arrives too late to prevent the disaster.
The accusations from Peters came following a Coronial inquest into the attack, during which a parliamentary staffer testified that a phone call was made to the emergency services six minutes after the shooter, Brenton Tarrant, had delivered an email to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Abdur Razzaq, the spokesman for the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand, refuting Peters’ allegations, stated that Peters was spreading misinformation at an inopportune moment. As New Zealand grapples with comprehending the tragedy and envisaging ways of preventing such atrocities in the future, Razzaq identified that this was not a time for political positioning.
Carmel Sepuloni, the outgoing Deputy Prime Minister, joined the voices against Peters, labeling his tweets as pushing misinformation and bizarre. She urged him to apologize and retract his statements.
A spokesperson from the Prime Minister’s office also denied Peters’ allegations as entirely false and called for the tweet to be taken down and corrected.
As the tragic incident was recounted during the coronial inquest, it came to light that the terrorist had emailed his manifesto to the Prime Minister’s Office only minutes before commencing his assault. This attack saw 51 innocent lives lost.
Despite widespread reporting by multiple news outlets stating that the Prime Minister’s Office was aware of the impending terrorist attack, Peters insists that this information was only recently brought to the public’s attention.
Even after the Prime Minister confirmed the receipt of the email and the manifesto, Peters, who was Deputy Prime Minister at the time of the incident, alleges a lack of transparency from Ardern towards the public. He demanded that Ardern present evidence at the inquest.
Peters claimed in a follow-up statement that despite opportunities and expectations to share pertinent information like the phone call made to the police, Ardern’s office failed in its duty of transparency.