Attacker insincere, survivor tells judge
QUEBEC Aymen Derbali almost didn’t go to the mosque that night.
When he realized it was 7:30 p.m., the time prayers were scheduled to start on Jan. 29, 2017, he thought he might just pray at home. But he decided to go. He jumped into his car and drove to the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec. He arrived around 7:45 p.m. and began praying.
Within minutes, he was laying on the ground, unconscious, bleeding from seven bullet wounds.
Sitting in a wheelchair, Derbali, 41, left paralyzed from the waist down after the Quebec City mosque shooting, told his story to Judge François Huot Monday.
He was the first person to present a victim-impact statement in the sentencing hearing for Alexandre Bissonnette, who injured Derbali and four other men, and killed six other men.
One of the first to see Bissonnette on the night of the shooting, Derbali tried to stop the gunman before being repeatedly shot. He said Bissonnette looked “determined to kill us all.” Derbali lost consciousness as he fell to the floor, he told Huot, though he awakened just long enough to realize police were on the scene. He spent six months in a hospital, including two months in intensive care. Ten operations were performed to remove bullets from his body; one remains lodged in his spinal cord.
Derbali, who will never walk again, said he has found strength by thinking of his three children.
“I thought of all my brothers (who died at the mosque), who left 17 orphans behind, who didn’t have the chance that I had to see my children again,” Derbali said.
Because he needs specialized care, Derbali has not been able to move back home. Derbali said he can spend the day with his family on weekends now but feels “powerless” because he is not able to hold his son in his arms or to play or run with him.
During his testimony, Derbali, who emigrated from Tunisia to Quebec in 2001, was about 10 metres away from Bissonnette’s seat in the prisoner’s dock.
Without looking at the killer, Derbali said he did not believe Bissonnette when he said last month he regretted the shooting.
“He was just looking for compassion from the public,” Derbali told Huot.