New Zealand mosque attacks: Victim's husband forgives the terrorist

Agencies
March 17, 2019

Christchurch, Mar 17: A man whose wife was killed in the Christchurch terror attack as she rushed back into a mosque to rescue him said he harbours no hatred toward the gunman, insisting forgiveness is the best path forward.

"I would say to him 'I love him as a person'," Farid Ahmad told AFP. "I could not accept what he did. What he did was a wrong thing."

Asked if he forgave the 28-year-old white supremacist suspect, he said: "Of course. The best thing is forgiveness, generosity, loving and caring, positivity."
Husna Ahmad, 44, was killed at the Al Noor mosque - the first of two targeted by the terrorist.

Fifty people, at least four of them women, were killed in the attack on the mosques where worshippers had gone for Friday prayers.

Ahmad and his wife emigrated from Bangladesh to New Zealand in 1990 and have one daughter.

When the shooting started, Husna helped several people escape from the women's and children's hall.

"She was screaming 'come this way, hurry up', and she took many children and ladies towards a safe garden," Ahmad said.

"Then she was coming back for checking about me, because I was in a wheelchair, and as she was approaching the gate she was shot. She was busy saving lives, forgetting about herself."

Ahmad, 59, who has been confined to a wheelchair since being hit by a drunk driver in 1998, believes he escaped the hail of bullets because the gunman was focused on other targets.

"This guy was shooting one person two, three times, probably that gave some time to us to move out... even the dead he was shooting them again."

Ahmad, who was a butcher but now sells homeopathy products, did not see his wife when he left the mosque and only learned of her death after someone photographed her body.

"Her picture was out in the social media, so somebody showed me the picture and I identified quite easily."

Australian suspect Brenton Tarrant has yet to enter a plea in the single murder charge brought against him so far.

A self-professed white supremacist he flashed a white power symbol when he arrived in court on Sunday. His meandering "manifesto" is filled with racist vitriol, detailing two years of planning for the massacre.

In the 74-page screed, he says he first began considering an attack in April and May of 2017 while travelling in France and elsewhere in Western Europe.

Ahmad on Sunday faced the difficult task of formally identifying his wife's body and claim her effects.

Soft spoken, his eyes heavy with grief, he spoke fondly of his wife.

If he were able to sit down with the suspected mass murderer, he said he would encourage him to rethink his outlook on life.

"I will tell him that inside him he has great potential to be a generous person, to be a kind person, to be a person who would save people, save humanity rather than destroy them," he said.

"I want him to look for that positive attitude in him, and I hope and I pray for him he would be a great civilian one day. I don't have any grudge."

Comments

Abdullah
 - 
Monday, 18 Mar 2019

May Allah blerss you brother Farid Ahmad and bless your wife + other martyrs with highest place in Jannah.  Its obvious the terrorist did not gain anything other than securing a place in Hell. 

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Agencies
November 22,2025

indiapak.jpg

New York/Washington: US President Donald Trump has again claimed to have solved the conflict between India and Pakistan, repeating his assertion during a meeting with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office.

Mamdani flew to Washington DC for his first meeting with Trump in the White House on Friday. Trump said he “enjoyed” the meeting, which he described as “great.”

During remarks in the Oval Office, with Mamdani standing next to him, Trump repeated his claim that he solved the May conflict between India and Pakistan.

"I did eight peace deals of countries, including India and Pakistan,” he said.

On Wednesday, Trump had said he threatened to put 350 per cent tariffs on India and Pakistan if they did not end their conflict, repeating his claim that he solved the fighting between the nuclear-armed neighbours and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called him to say “we're not going to go to war.”

Since May 10, when Trump announced on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington, he has repeated his claim over 60 times that he “helped settle” the tensions between India and Pakistan.

India has consistently denied any third-party intervention. India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians. India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes.

Mamdani emerged victorious in the closely-watched battle for New York City Mayor, becoming the first South Asian and Muslim to be elected to sit at the helm of the largest city in the US.

He had been the front-runner in the NYC Mayoral election for months and defeated Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and political heavyweight former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent candidate and was officially endorsed by Trump just hours before the elections.

Indian-descent Mamdani is the son of renowned filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani. He was born and raised in Kampala, Uganda and moved to New York City with his family when he was 7. Mamdani became a naturalised US citizen only recently, in 2018.

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News Network
November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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News Network
December 5,2025

Mangaluru: In a significant step to curb online hate and intimidation, Mangaluru City Police have registered a suo motu case against multiple Instagram accounts accused of circulating alleged provocative and threatening content.

While monitoring social media activity on Tuesday, Kankanady Town PSI Anitha Nikkam identified the Instagram handle ‘team_targetttt_900’ for posting a hate message alongside images of lethal weapons. Another account, ‘team_nagara_900’, allegedly shared a threatening post targeting activist Bharath Kumdelu, tagging additional pages such as KARAVALI-OFFICIAL.

Several other accounts — including ‘immu_bhai.fan’, ‘target_boy_900’, ‘kings_of_manglore’, ‘team_target_boys.900’, ‘arshad_mangalore’, ‘target_ka19_ullal’, ‘team_target__’, ‘troll_tigersz_900’, ‘tr_group_900’, and ‘team_target_900’ — are also under scrutiny for spreading similar inflammatory material, police said.

Authorities have urged citizens, especially young social media users, to report suspicious pages and avoid engaging with groups that glorify violence or threaten individuals. Online hate can quickly escalate into real-world harm, and police stress that sharing or promoting such content can attract legal consequences.

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