The man who committed mass murder inside two Christchurch mosques in 2019 has argued in court that when he pleaded guilty he was not making rational decisions and, for that reason, he should be allowed to defend himself at a trial.
That prospect is daunting to families of those lost and survivors who live with the trauma, but this week, the terrorist and his lawyers have been making his case.
The court lies right across the road from the Beehive, the executive wing of the country's parliament, from where then-prime minister Jacinda Ardern addressed the nation on the evening of March 15, 2019.
She informed the nation that the mass shooting earlier that day on the South Island could "only be described as a terrorist attack".
Ms Ardern said the gunman had chosen New Zealand precisely because it was a place of "diversity, kindness, compassion".
"A home for those who share our values," she said at the time.
At that point, 40 people were known to have been murdered at two Christchurch mosques.
The final death toll would reach 51.
Many of the victims were relatively recent immigrants to New Zealand and some were refugees.
Seven years later in an extraordinary hearing, the Court of Appeal is considering an application by the white supremacist who sent out a manifesto and live streamed the attack to vacate his guilty pleas.
Only a select group of reporters has been allowed into the room to watch the proceedings, which concludes today.
Our identity documents are verified, our bags searched and screened multiple times a day. During one of the early checks, I asked if this process was normal.
The response: "Oh, there's nothing normal about this."
In Christchurch, the community can follow proceedings via a delayed recording. Brenton Tarrant addressed the court from a room in the Auckland prison where he is held.
And here in Wellington, the panels of judges will decide if he has any case at all.
New Zealand's three largest cities are all wrapped up in this sombre task.
Lessons learned in attack aftermath
Tarrant's murderous rampage rocked New Zealand and its impacts are still being felt.
Sweeping gun reforms were announced in the days after the attack, and changes have been made to the way the courts operate in an attempt prevent them being used as a platform.
"What happened in New Zealand, it was unprecedented and at every point we've had to create new methods to deal with the situation," said Waikato University professor of law Alexander Gillespie.
"We're learning as we go."
At his first court appearance the morning after the attack, the gunman was handcuffed and dressed in a prison tunic but still managed to make a white power gesture.
Authorities here want to ensure he never again uses the court to broadcast his ideology.
The now-35-year-old, originally from Grafton, New South Wales, appeared before the court for three hours at the start of the hearing on Monday, but under strict controls only the first few minutes was released for broadcast.
Professor Gillespie said the court had got the balance right.
"You do need to have some kind of objective transparency, where the person who is accused can be seen and some of what they are saying can be heard," he said.
"But at the same time, you've got to make sure that the platform they're given is not hijacked for other purposes."
A terrorist's state of mind
The question at the heart of the hearing is Tarrant's mental state at the time he pleaded guilty in March 2020 to charges of murder, attempted murder and terrorism.
He is asking the court to vacate those pleas, saying when he made them he was acting irrationally as a result of the conditions of his confinement.
During three days of oral testimony, the court heard from a string of his former lawyers.
Barristers Jonathan Hudson and Shane Tait represented the gunman from March 2019 through to July 2020.
Both men rejected the notion their client had only pleaded guilty because he was in such poor mental health that he "had no choice".
The court heard lawyers told him they could not run the defence he wanted and that he had accepted their advice.
Mr Tait said he instructed Tarrant that the argument he was protecting New Zealand from "over-population by immigrant communities" was not available to him.
The barrister said he told Tarrant: "Any trial judge would not let that defence be put to a jury."
In any case, the court heard "in keeping with his ideology" the gunman wanted to be convicted on the terrorism charge, and was "pleased" when it was added to the charge sheet.
Mr Tait said his client consistently claimed he intended to plead guilty; it was just a question of when.
"'Brenton, what am I going to tell a jury?'" he recalled asking him.
"Don't worry, it won't get to that," his client said.
The bar for the guilty pleas to be vacated is high. The court will have to be convinced not only of the mental health argument, but that there were very good reasons why the convicted man filed his application so late.
Another lawyer, Tony Ellis, who was engaged by the terrorist from June to November 2021, said Tarrant had raised the possibility of an appeal with him.
Dr Ellis told the court Tarrant wanted his lawyer to "basically act as his mouthpiece" and he was not prepared to do that.
In the end, the application was filed in November 2022, more than two years after Tarrant was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
That is well beyond the normal 20-day deadline for appeals to be lodged.
NZ's 'most reviled person'
In making their submissions to the court on Thursday, Tarrant's legal team acknowledged the events of March 15, 2019 were "profoundly shocking and tragic" for New Zealand.
They said it was precisely because they were so unprecedented that Tarrant ended up being held in conditions that they argued did not meet expectations.
The lawyers, whose identities have been suppressed and who are referred to as Counsel A, B, C and D, argued those conditions, including sensory deprivation, isolation and constant surveillance, had robbed their client of his identity and sound mind.
Counsel A drew on a Nelson Mandela quote, telling the court: "No-one truly knows a nation until he's been inside its jails."
"A nation should not be judged on how it treats its highest citizens, but how it treats its lowest ones," they said.
Counsel A said despite "the undoubtedly strong and no doubt justified emotions" that were attached to this particular case, minimum principles and standards must apply to all prisoners.
"Even Mr Tarrant, who has been described as the most reviled person in New Zealand."
The Norwegian playbook
Whatever the outcome of this hearing, it is likely New Zealand's most notorious inmate will be back in court in again.
If the court rejects the application to vacate the pleas, it will convene again later in the year to consider a second application in which Tarrant is seeking leave to appeal his conviction.
If that all fails, he could take this matter to the Supreme Court, and it might not end there.
"There are other avenues such as human rights bodies at the UN level that he may seek to exploit," Professor Gillespie said.
"It's a common pattern, often with those who are convicted of extremist crimes, to try to get exposure — both for notoriety and to continue the pain that they inflict upon others in terms of keeping the issue alive and their name relevant."
An ombudsman's report from December 2024 found the solitary confinement conditions Tarrant and other prisoners deemed "extreme risk" were held in to be "deeply concerning".
Legal challenges to those conditions could also potentially see him back before the court.
Professor Gillespie said Tarrant was likely drawing inspiration from another mass murderer's playbook — that of Anders Behring Breivik.
The Norwegian Neo-Nazi is serving a 21-year sentence for the 2011 murder of 77 people, many of them teenagers at a Labour Party youth camp.
Breivik has launched a number of legal challenges to his sentence and the conditions of his confinement.
In 2016, he gave a Nazi salute at the start of a hearing into his solitary confinement.
"I think New Zealand has learned from the Breivik experience and is ensuring much tighter control of the media and the reporting," Professor Gillespie said.
"Nevertheless, everything is potentially flammable."
An anxious wait
Aya Al-Umari, whose brother Hussein was murdered in the Christchurch attack, would rather not have been at the hearing.
What she means by that is she would rather her brother were still alive and that she had never had to deal with any of this.
"We just have to try and carry that and move forward," she told me ahead of this week.
Ms Al-Umari said she took strength from the thought that her late big brother, who was posthumously awarded the New Zealand Bravery Star, would be proud of her for continuing to show up.
I touched base with Ms Al-Umari after Tarrant had given his testimony to see what she made of it all.
Ms Al-Umari said she was glad she had been there to hear it because it reassured her that he did not "have a leg to stand on".
The decision now rests with three judges retiring today, and it could be a couple of months before they hand down their judgment.
It will be an anxious wait for Ms Al-Umari and the families of all 51 people killed, the 40 people injured, and the many New Zealanders whose lives are forever changed by that heinous act during Friday prayers.
