A 22-year-old New Zealand man has been arrested for distributing chilling footage live-streamed by alleged perpetrator Brenton Tarrant as he gunned down worshippers in a mosque. It comes amid Facebook’s own crackdown on the video.
In a statement on Sunday, police said they apprehended a local man who is not believed to be directly linked to the attacker. The 22-year-old is facing charges under Films Video and Publications Classifications Act, which prohibits distribution or possession of material determined to be “objectionable.”
“The live stream video of the shootings in Christchurch has been classified by the Chief Censor’s Office as objectionable,” police said.
The alleged breach of the 1993 law may land the man, who has not been identified, in prison, police said in a statement.
Under the law, the publication is ‘objectionable’ if it “describes, depicts, expresses, or otherwise deals with matters such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty, or violence in such a manner that the availability of the publication is likely to be injurious to the public good.”
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The man has been taken into custody and is set to face court on Monday, police said.
The news of the man’s arrest comes shortly after New Zealand’s biggest satellite television provider, Sky Network Television, yanked Sky News Australia off its platform for airing clips from the footage. It said in a tweet, that has since been deleted, that it decided to remove the Sky News Australia off air until they are “confident that the distressing footage” is no longer being shared.
Facebook, meanwhile, has launched a wide-ranging crackdown against those spreading the gruesome first-person shooter-like footage, erasing 1.5 million instances of the video in 24 hours, including 1.2 million that were removed while they were still being uploaded.
In the wake of the attack that left 50 people dead in two Christchurch mosques on Friday, NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern appealed to the public and media organizations not to show the graphic footage.
“We should not share, spread, or actively engage in that message of hate,” she said.
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