New Zealand Government to toughen anti-terror laws

Following the recent knife attack in Auckland by a man who was under police surveillance, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has promised to toughen the country’s counter terror laws.

The attacker has now been identified as Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, a 32-year-old Tamil, who arrived in New Zealand in 2011 and sought refugee status. The Sri Lankan national stabbed seven people in a supermarket, three of whom remain in a critical condition. He became a person of national security interest in 2016.

Ardern, who described the stabbings as a terrorist attack, said she expected that changes to the country's counter-terrorism legislation would be backed by parliament by the end of September. The legislation is expected to make it easier to convict someone for planning a terror attack.

In a press conference she said: "We must be willing to make the changes that we know may not necessarily have changed history, but could change the future.”