Brenton Tarrant, the far-right terrorist who killed 50 people in his attacks on two mosques in the city of Christchurch (New Zealand) on March 15, spent at least ten days in Spain, between the months of February and March 2017, according to what the newspaper has been able to know of police sources that investigate its trace in our country.
The investigations of the National Police have discovered that Tarrant arrived in Spain from France and passed through Granada, Cordoba and Ronda (Malaga), as well as Jerez de la Frontera. Also, that he traveled alone and that he always slept in medium-priced hotels, "very frequented by tourists", one night in each city. The agents in charge of the case still do not know if it was a simply tourist visit, although they have warned that Tarrant made stops at some of the Spanish towns with more "cultural connotations linked to the stage of Al Andalus, such as the Alhambra, the Mosque of Cordoba and the walls and Islamic doors of Ronda ".
Initiative trip
That winter of 2017, the Australian supremacist spent a few days in Portugal and returned to Spain, where researchers have confirmed that he spent one night in hotels in Madrid, Toledo, León and La Coruña, the latter possibly being used as a base to visit the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. The investigations of the Spanish police point out that the one that later would be terrorist of extreme right could use the train as means of transport for our country. Finally, he went to France, where he moved, according to his own writings, in rental cars. Tarrant noted that his views changed, became radicalized and became violent between April and May 2017, just after that trip through Spain, Portugal and France.
On March 15, before beginning to kill innocents, almost all Muslims, and to broadcast it live through Facebook, Tarrant, who had worked in a gym as a personal trainer, sent to the authorities of New Zealand a manifesto that He titled The great replacement. The Spanish policemen have analyzed it in search of mentions to our country and to that trip. "I traveled as a tourist in Western Europe: France, Spain, Portugal and others," he says in the text.
The Australian assassin says that the final trigger that convinced him to kill happened on April 7, 2017, when a jihadist terrorist threw a truck on the passers-by in Stockholm (Sweden) and killed five of them. Among the victims was a girl whom Tarrant expressly mentions: Ebba Akerlund. "I could not continue ignoring the attacks any longer, they were attacks against my people, against my culture, attacks against my faith, against my soul, they should not be ignored," he concludes in his manifesto, in which he defines himself as "fascist and racist".
France, "invaded"
As for his trip to the Iberian Peninsula and France, the future terrorist reflects his disappointment with what happened in the French elections that year, in April and May 2017, when all the candidates joined against the "pusillanimous" that " only "proposed to deport illegal immigrants (alluding to Marine Le Pen). Tarrant does not collect his impressions on Spanish cities, but on French ones. "The final push was to see the state of the cities and towns of France, I had heard and read about the invasion of France for years ... but when I arrived in France ... In every city, in every French town there were invaders" , in allusion to Muslim immigrants.
The police responsible for tracking the tracks of the Australian murderer in our country believe that it was an individual trip and that during his stay in our country he did not contact any extreme right-wing or racist Spanish group. In their investigations, the agents have come to the jail of Villabona (Asturias), where he is sentenced by the ex-military Josué Estébanez, sentenced to 26 years in prison for killing the anti-fascist militant Carlos Palomino by stabbing him in a subway car in Madrid. November 2007
On the day of his murders, Tarrant had the name of Estébanez written on one of the loaders of his weapons, which made them suspect that both could be known. But when they asked the ultra Spanish prisoner for his Australian colleague, he simply "flip", according to the sources consulted by THE NEWSPAPER, before clarifying that he did not know anything about Tarrant. "His name was the same as Don Pelayo's," explain sources in the case. "They were some of their idols, although I did not know them," they add.
