“I don’t agree with what you did ... you took a wrong decision, a wrong direction, but I want to believe in you. That you have great potential in your heart,” he said.

Farid found out about his wife’s death when a detective he knew called his niece as they waited outside the mosque.

She passed him the phone. “I don’t want you to wait the whole night, Farid. Go home, she will not come,” Farid said the detective told him.

“As that moment I realised two things: One, definitely it was gunshots, and two, this is my last day,” he said. “Because in that situation, with a wheelchair, it was impossible to get out.”

But the killer did not enter that chamber, and Farid was able to escape to the car park where he watched the massacre unfold from behind a car, on the opposite side of the mosque to where his wife was gunned down outside.

“People were screaming and rushing to come out ... as they were coming, they were panicking, I saw some people had blood, some people were limping,” he said.

After the gunman left to continue his rampage at another mosque, Farid went back inside the building.

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“It was unbelievable,” he said. “On the right hand side, usually where I pray, so many dead bodies.”

The wounded were screaming. He comforted them until police arrived, who then took him back outside. “At that time I did not know that my wife’s dead body was (at) the other gate.”

Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, was charged on Saturday with murder. He was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5 where police said he was likely to face more charges.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday praised the bravery and courage showed by mosque worshippers, saying the nation stood with its grieving Muslim community in this “darkest of days”.

Hati Mohemmed Daoud Nabi, 71, opened the door to the Al Noor mosque. Ardern said he “uttered the words ‘Hello brother, welcome’. His final words”.

“Of course he had no idea of the hate that sat behind the door, but his welcome tells us so much – that he was a member of a faith that welcomed all its members, that showed openness, and care,” she said.

In the aftermath of the shootings, bewilderment has been a common refrain, as the city comes to grips with the scale of the tragedy – the worst mass shooting in New Zealand’s history.

But there has also been a sense of generosity and solidarity, led by victims such as Farid, who has preached at the mosque and advocates forgiveness.

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Despite the pain of losing his wife, he said he bore no ill will towards the accused terrorist.

“If there is any chance I get, I want to meet you,” he said. “I want to hug you and I want to tell him in face that I am talking from my heart. I have no grudge against you, I never hated you, I will never hate you,” Ahmed said.

“I want to hug him and say: ‘I have forgiven him’,” he said. “I want to tell him, if he has any mother, I want to hug her too, and I want to tell her that I’ll treat you exactly like my auntie.”

Additional reporting by Reuters