As the gunman drove to the two New Zealand mosques where he carried out his mass killings, a Serb nationalist song was heard playing in…
As the gunman drove to the two New Zealand mosques where he carried out his mass killings, a Serb nationalist song was heard playing in the background of the haunting video he broadcast live on Facebook.
The mass shooter’s weapons also bore the names of several historical Serb nationalist figures, revealing an unexpected interest in Balkan conflicts that stirred bad blood in a region fractured by war.
Hours after 50 people were gunned down in two mosques by the Australian right-wing extremist in Christchurch, Bosnia’s ambassador went on local television to express concern about the song heard in the suspected killer’s video that went on to show him murder victim after victim.
It was a „Serbian nationalist song in which the name of Radovan Karadzic is mentioned and called on to lead Serbs“, he said, referring the convicted war criminal who led Bosnia’s Serbs during the 1992-95 war.
Karadzic will go before a UN court this week to hear the final verdict on his 40-year sentence for the genocide of Muslims in Srebrenica and other atrocities during the inter-ethnic conflict in Bosnia that left 100,000 dead.
According to the Bosnian diplomat, the song’s lyrics also say „Turks must be killed“, a term hardline Serb nationalists still routinely use to refer to Bosnian Muslims.
Though linked the 1990s war, the song played by the 28-year-old suspect Brenton Tarrant appears to have more recently been revived as an internet meme in the extreme-right circles he circulated in online.
