Mourners begin to bury those killed in New Zealand shootings
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Relatives of those killed in last week’s shootings at two mosques in New Zealand began to bury the dead Wednesday, as the country’s prime minister renewed her call to remember the 50 victims rather than the white supremacist accused of slaughtering them.
Hundreds of people were gathered at a grave designated for Muslim burials as the first two funerals got under way. Their identities were not released in advance. While many of the victims will be buried there, some are being brought back to their home countries, officials have said.
Families of those killed had been anxiously awaiting word on when they could bury their loved ones. New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush said police have now formally identified and released the remains of 21 of those killed. Islamic tradition calls for bodies to be cleansed and buried as soon as possible.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s plea not to give any notoriety to the accused 28-years-old Australian white supremacist first came in a speech to Parliament prompted by the accused gunman’s decision to dismiss his lawyer and represent himself. The move had raised concerns he would use the trial as a platform for his racist views.
During a visit to a high school that lost two students in the shootings, Ardern revisited that thought and asked students not to say the attacker’s name or dwell on him.
Shifting hopes as Republicans, Democrats wait for Mueller
WASHINGTON — It’s a witch hunt, a vendetta, the worst presidential harassment in history.
That’s what President Donald Trump has shouted for two years about the special counsel’s Russia probe. Now, barring an eleventh-hour surprise, Trump and his allies are starting to see it as something potentially very different: a political opportunity.
With Robert Mueller’s findings expected any day, the president has grown increasingly confident the report will produce what he insisted all along — no clear evidence of a conspiracy between Russia and his 2016 campaign. And Trump and his advisers are considering how to weaponize those possible findings for the 2020 race, according to current and former White House officials and presidential confidants who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
A change is underway as well among congressional Democrats, who have long believed the report would offer damning evidence against the president. The Democrats are busy building new avenues for evidence to come out, opening a broad array of investigations of Trump’s White House and businesses that go far beyond Mueller’s focus on Russian interference to help Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton.
It’s a striking role reversal.
Dutch prosecutors consider terror motive in tram shooting
UTRECHT, Netherlands — Dutch investigators probing the deadly tram shooting in the city of Utrecht sharpened their focus Tuesday on a possible extremist motive, as judicial authorities revealed that the main suspect was released from jail this month and faces a rape trial in July.
The nature of Monday’s attack and a note found in a suspected getaway car suggest a possible terror motive, prosecutors said in a statement, but they add that other possible reasons also are being investigated.
“Based on the letter, we think he had a terroristic motive,” police spokesman Joost Lanshage told The Associated Press. He declined to elaborate.
Speaking in parliament, anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders said the note expressed support for the suspect’s “Muslim brothers.”
Prosecutors also said that investigations so far have not established any relationship at all between the main suspect, Gokmen Tanis, and the shooting victims.
By wire sources