The gunman who killed 51 worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, is contemplating interesting his convictions and jail sentence, his lawyer stated Monday.

Australian Brenton Tarrant was topic to inhumane and degrading therapy in jail, prompting him to plead responsible underneath duress, lawyer Tony Ellis wrote in a memo to the chief coroner.

Tarrant, a white supremacist, livestreamed the 2019 assaults on Fb. It was the worst atrocity in New Zealand’s fashionable historical past and prompted lawmakers to swiftly ban the deadliest sorts of semiautomatic weapons.

Final yr earlier than his trial was as a consequence of start, Tarrant pleaded responsible to all prices, together with 51 counts of homicide, 40 counts of tried homicide and one rely of terrorism. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with out the potential for parole, the hardest sentence accessible in New Zealand.

The lawyer’s memo was not instantly made publicly accessible Monday. Ellis stated the gunman had licensed him to debate the case with solely two native media retailers, RNZ and Stuff.

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The coroner’s workplace didn’t instantly launch a duplicate of the memo, referring requests again to Ellis. However the coroner’s workplace didn’t dispute the memo’s existence or the characterization of it by the media retailers.

RNZ reported that Ellis had suggested his consumer to attraction his sentence and convictions on the idea that his rights had been breached, and that Tarrant was contemplating such an attraction.

Ellis stated the gunman was held in solitary confinement for a lot of the time whereas awaiting his trial and lacked correct entry to attorneys, info and documentation about his case.

The gunman instructed his lawyer that his therapy in jail affected his “will to hold on” and had determined the best approach out was to plead responsible, RNZ reported.

The memo got here after Chief Coroner Deborah Marshall’s workplace final month opened an inquiry into the deaths of the victims, the newest in a collection of probes into the assaults.

Rosemary Omar, whose 24-year-old son Tariq was gunned down at Al Noor mosque, instructed RNZ that the gunman’s claims have been nothing greater than him looking for additional consideration.