Samsudeen arrived in New Zealand in October 2011, aged 22, on a student visa.

Shortly after arriving he made a claim for refugee status. Immigration New Zealand declined this claim in 2012, but he appealed to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal and was successful.

December 2013 he was granted refugee status

In 2016 he caught the attention of the police and the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) after talking sympathetically on Facebook about terrorist attacks, violent war-related videos and comments advocating violence extremism, and he was spoken to by police.

In May 2017, Samsudeen was arrested at Auckland International airport. Police believed he was heading to Syria, and a search of his apartment found Islamic State propaganda, and a hunting knife. He was released on bail.  

In August 2018 – while on bail - bought a knife and police arrested him again, and found further extremist material.

By 2020, he had already been detained for three years.

In July 2021 he was found guilty of the charges for IS propaganda, and sentenced to a year’s supervision, with a series of conditions that restricted him from internet devices.

Officials had tried to justify detaining Samsudeen in jail until his asylum case was resolved but there were no legal grounds for doing so. Instead, 30 officers watched him around the clock for more than 50 days before he grabbed a knife from a supermarket shelf and attacked 7 shoppers, metres away from the undercover police surveilling him.

Three of those injured were in a critical condition in hospital on Saturday.

Terrorist was neutralised by police.

Terrorist's family later released a letter where they claim that Ahamed had "mental problems".

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/05/new-zealand-stabbings-officials-tried-for-years-to-deport-terrorist-prior-to-auckland-attack-jacinda-adern-says