Jamal Awil

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Fleeing war did not shield Safi from fatal bullets. [fact]

The twenty-fourth victim of the 2019 New Zealand mosque massacre was a fifty-five-year-old man named Matiullah Safi. In the aftermath of the attack, his nephew told BuzzFeed News that Mr. Safi's son was finally able to confirm that his father was one of the fifty-one mosque massacre victims when he saw the white supremacist's livestream on Facebook Live. "He was showing me the video, going 'This is my dad! He got shot in the head!'" Mr. Safi's nephew recalled. "I tried to settle him down. But he was saying 'This is my dad! I know him and what kind of clothes he wears!" The fifty-five-year-old father had fled his war-torn homeland of Afghanistan hoping to find a safer place to live in Christchurch, New Zealand. "Death was still a bullet," his nephew said after the mosque massacre. "Even coming to the safest place in the world."

XREF: Connects to broader knowledge of the Christchurch mosque shooting and the livestreaming of violence by white supremacists.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 439