He was given a community-based sentence and released in July 2021.<\/p>\n
Seven weeks after being released into the community, on September 3, 2021, Samsudeen carried out a knife attack in West Auckland\u2019s Lynnmall Countdown supermarket.<\/p>\n
Emergency services rush a victim to an ambulance after the September 2021 attack. Photo \/ Alex Burton<\/p>\n
Another important aspect to be examined by the inquest, the coroner said, was the man\u2019s attitudes towards women before the attack, and his mental health.<\/p>\n
The coroner disclosed that after his release from prison, Samsudeen had acted inappropriately towards a female police officer and lawyer, including \u201cdistressing\u201d instances of stalking and harassment.<\/p>\n
The inquest was again to see if these factors were noticeable by the relevant government agencies and community members at the time, and whether that should have graded Samsudeen as a higher risk to the public.<\/p>\n
Ahamed Samsudeen in the High Court at Auckland in 2018. Photo \/ Greg Bowker<\/p>\n
His probation officer<\/p>\n
The first witness at today\u2019s hearing was Samsudeen\u2019s probation officer, whose name and identity is suppressed.<\/p>\n
As Samsudeen was seen as high risk, the probation officer said he first met with the man months before his prison release to build trust and a good rapport.<\/p>\n
Before this he had done a \u201cthorough\u201d review of the man\u2019s prison case file, which showed that when first incarcerated, Samsudeen was \u201cpolite and respectful\u201d to prison staff.<\/p>\n
However, by the time the probation officer visited him in prison, he said the man\u2019s behaviour had \u201cdrastically changed\u201d, including reports of him being verbally abusive to Corrections officers, throwing urine and faeces at them and using racial slurs.<\/p>\n
He said the first meeting went well for about 10-15 minutes but he could feel \u201ctension building\u201d as he sensed Samsudeen didn\u2019t trust him.<\/p>\n
When they began to talk about prison release conditions, the man started angrily pacing, kicking the door and the meeting was cut short, the probation officer said.<\/p>\n
While he didn\u2019t meet with Samsudeen for some months, the probation officer said he spent his time finding a place for the man to live and an appropriate imam, or religious leader, for his release.<\/p>\n
He found an Auckland mosque Samsudeen could stay in and introduced the man to the mosque\u2019s chairperson in June.<\/p>\n
Upon Samsudeen\u2019s release, the probation officer described his team\u2019s management of him as \u201cintensive\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was my entire caseload,\u201d the probation officer said.<\/p>\n
But it became clear the man was demanding and difficult, he said, and the use of electronics was his main focus.<\/p>\n
Part of the man\u2019s sentence conditions was that he undergo a psychological assessment, but the probation officer said Samsudeen continued to make excuses to put off meeting with a Corrections staff psychologist.<\/p>\n
In mid-July 2021, Samsudeen was given a phone with internet access but a month later, he was denied further internet devices as he was wiping his phone history before it was checked by police.<\/p>\n
On September 1, 2021, the probation officer learned the man had been ordered not to associate with a female police officer.<\/p>\n
Two days later, on September 3, on the morning of the attack, the probation officer said Samsudeen rang him about another non-association order made against him, this time in the name of his female lawyer, whose identity is suppressed.<\/p>\n
In retrospect, the probation officer said Corrections had \u201ccompletely changed its approach\u201d when dealing with Muslim prisoners and\/or offenders since the supermarket terror attack.<\/p>\n
He said he knew of a few individuals across New Zealand who had been similarly influenced by Islamic State and \u201cgrievances\u201d in their home countries, who had become \u201csuccess stories\u201d.<\/p>\n
In those cases, he said family involvement and psychologists played a huge role in that success.<\/p>\n
Coroner Marcus Elliott at the first stage of the Samsudeen inquest in 2025. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
Time to \u2018settle down\u2019<\/p>\n
The probation officer was questioned by the lawyer Fletcher Pilditch, KC, who was working in the interests of Samsudeen\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
He queried why the probation officer hadn\u2019t met with the man more regularly, both before and after his release, given he was trying to build trust and a rapport with him.<\/p>\n
The probation officer said that after the first meeting didn\u2019t go well, it was \u201cprobably\u201d a decision of his managers that he delay meeting with Samsudeen in prison again until June 2021, to give time for Samsudeen to \u201csettle down\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pilditch asked why Samsudeen, upon release, only reported to the probation officer in person fortnightly, and by phone every other week, and whether that was enough \u201cface-to-face\u201d contact to \u201cbuild trust\u201d.<\/p>\n
The probation officer said the \u201camount of hostility\u201d Samsudeen showed in their meetings meant there was \u201cno use\u201d in them meeting more frequently.<\/p>\n
Pilditch also asked if Samsudeen was showing any evidence of mental illness during those meetings, to which the probation officer replied he wasn\u2019t, apart from his \u201cheightened state\u201d of hostility and intimidation.<\/p>\n
The lawyer also pointed out that the probation officer could have ordered Samsudeen to see a psychologist, as per the man\u2019s court-ordered sentence conditions.<\/p>\n
But the probation officer explained that their staff psychologists wanted \u201cconsent\u201d from Samsudeen to assess him, and that there was no point in assessing a person who was not willing.<\/p>\n
The inquest continues.<\/p>\n
Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She\u2019s currently based in Auckland covering justice related stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was \u201cno evidence\u201d the Muslim man was radicalised when he came to New Zealand in 2011, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[259176,89,11154,832,13999,23300,117,111,43,139,69,259177,8466,5433,37735],"class_list":["post-523380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-ahamed","tag-attack","tag-begins","tag-countdown","tag-inquest","tag-lynn","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-samsudeen","tag-second","tag-stage","tag-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}