‘It was a night of horror for my family’
Emotional statements given At mosque killer’s sentencing hearing
QUEBEC The Quebec City mosque attack was over in two minutes. But for the survivors, widows and orphans, the impact has been lifechanging.
On Tuesday, witnesses recounted their trauma, grief and guilt to Justice François Huot.
They also provided guidance on the sentence they would like to see meted out to killer Alexandre Bissonnette, who fired 48 rounds from his handgun at the mosque on Jan. 29, 2017, and has pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder.
Bissonnette could face a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for 150 years. Witnesses testified with their backs turned to Bissonnette, who sat expressionless in the prisoner’s dock most of the day, alternately looking at the floor and straight ahead.
Here is some of what witnesses told Huot.
LOUIZA MOHAMED-SAID
Mohamed-Said’s husband of 18 years — Abdelkrim Hassane — was shot by Bissonnette and died in a hospital later. Mohamed- Said was soft-spoken and poised as she read aloud from a four-page statement in court, but cried several times as she spoke about her children and the panic and horror her husband must have felt during the assault.
She described her husband as a loving man, devoted to their three daughters, all under 11 years old. Nothing, she said, has been the same since he died. Family outings like picnics and trips stopped. Her children are terrified that she, too, will be the victim of a terrorist attack. And it upsets her that he will not be around for the graduations and weddings and that their youngest daughter will not remember him.
She told doctors she was ready to give her husband her “kidney or whatever it would take and that he absolutely had to be saved,” she said of the night she rushed to the hospital to be with her husband. “Alas, it was too late. I felt like I was living a nightmare.”
Mohamed-Said couldn’t bring herself to tell her children their father was dead until the next day, she said.
“Believe me, nothing is harder than telling little girls about the death of their father,” she said.
She said Bissonnette committed a hate crime aimed at terrifying the Muslim community. The killer “has succeeded in making my children believe that in peaceful, welcoming, tolerant Canada and Quebec, there is a place for horror, violence and murderous intolerance,” Mohamed- Said said.
She told Huot that if justice is to triumph over hate, Bissonnette must be punished severely. If he receives a light sentence or is ever released from jail, it would be like a second death for victims of the attack.
SAÏD EL-AMARI
Tall and burly with a bushy, black beard, El-Amari broke down in tears on the witness stand as he talked about his friend, Azzeddine Soufiane.
“Should we have gone to give him a hand? We think about that all the time,” an emotional El-Amari, shot in the abdomen during the rampage, said of Soufiane, who was killed after being shot five times as he single-handedly tried to stop Bissonnette.
Panicked, El-Amari tried to hide in an alcove that was already jammed with others. Then he felt a piercing pain in his abdomen, but didn’t move for fear of attracting Bissonnette’s attention. Another bullet hit him in the knee.
When his wife learned of the attack and that Soufiane had died, she was sure her husband was dead as well because they were often together at the mosque, he said.
“It was a night of horror for my family.”
El-Amari, a 40-year-old father of four children between 8 and 17, underwent multiple operations and was in a coma for a month after the attack, followed by another month recovering in a hospital.
A taxi driver, El-Amari said he has experienced Islamophobia and seen the rise of media outlets that demonize Muslims. But he said he always thought Quebecers were a peaceful people. That idea was shattered during the shooting, and now he wonders why in a free, democratic society some people are still stigmatized for practising their religion, he said.
He said he doesn’t want his kids to live in a society where someone like Bissonnette may one day walk free.
After his testimony, Huot told El-Amari not to feel guilt for not trying to save Soufiane, who has been widely hailed as a hero.
“Everybody in this room would have reacted the same way — it’s the survival instinct,” Huot said. “Mr. Soufiane’s actions were beyond us.”
SAÏD AKJOUR
Akjour was reading the Qur’an after prayers had ended when he heard a loud noise that he thought was a truck going by. In fact, it was a gun being fired by Bissonnette outside the mosque as he killed his first two victims.
Akjour said he thought of his son and father when he first saw Bissonnette and realized that a “massacre” was happening.
“My son has a mother. He who has a mother has everything,” he said. “When I thought of my father I felt a great urge to survive. I thought a father should not lose a son. “
During Bissonnette’s shooting spree, Akjour rushed with other worshippers into a small alcove to take cover, but he was shot in the left shoulder. It felt, he said, like a sharp knife entering his body.
“I thought the next bullet would be in the head,” he told Huot. “I had a feeling of helplessness.”
Akjour, 45, described the way Bissonnette behaved as coldblooded, saying the shooter was acting like he was playing a video game.
The attack lasted about two minutes.
“For me, it felt like two hours,” said Akjour, who has a seven-yearold son and works as an orderly in a long-term-care institution.
He said he personally thinks Bissonnette should be put to death for his crimes, but added that he trusts Huot will decide on a reasonable sentence that will discourage others from following in Bissonnette’s footsteps.
MOHAMED KHABAR
A 43-year-old barber, Khabar was chatting with friends at the mosque when the shooting started. Khabar described the terror he felt as some men were shot and fell to the ground and others in the mosque scrambled to save themselves. He heard Soufiane say “Stop, stop” before Bissonnette repeatedly shot him.
Unable to hide, Khabar was shot twice — in the knee and foot — and was bleeding profusely. After Bissonnette left the mosque, Khabar was able to make his way to the basement but feared the killer would return, follow his trail of blood into the basement and kill him. Survivors used an electrical cable as a tourniquet on his leg. The pain was excruciating, Khabar said.
Khabar, who underwent 12 operations, said pieces of one of the bullets are still in his foot and he has been unable to return to work. He has trouble sleeping and can’t get the image of his dead friends out of his head.
A father with a two-year-old son, Khabar said he is fed up with Islamophobia in Quebec, and with people who blame terrorist attacks around the world on peaceful Muslims here or who insist Muslim men tell their wives what to do and wear.
He said Bissonnette was clearly Islamophobic and carefully planned his attack.
“I want him to get a sentence that reflects the magnitude of the crime,” Khabar told Huot.