MOSQUE SHOOTER IS ‘NOT A MONSTER’
Father attacks Crown for ‘demonizing’ son
Insisting his son is “not a monster,” Alexandre Bissonnette’s father blamed bullying and mental problems for last year’s Quebec mosque massacre and lashed out at Crown prosecutors on Thursday.
“Alexandre is not a monster,” Raymond Bissonnette told reporters in his first public comments since Bissonnette, 28, killed six Muslim men in a Quebec City mosque.
He was reading a statement in the lobby of the Quebec City courthouse, standing next to Bissonnette’s mother, Manon Marchand, who was holding back tears.
It was the first time that they have spoken publicly about the shooting.
Bissonnette bitterly criticized the Crown prosecutor for “demonizing” his son, discounting the bullying he suffered in school and for recommending he serve a “death sentence in disguise” — life in prison with no chance of parole for 150 years.
He said the Crown is “seeking a political, not a judicial sentence.”
When the prosecutor said all children are bullied at some point in their youth, yet don’t commit such crimes, it played down the devastating effects of bullying, Bissonnette said.
“It is well recognized that bullying can cause lifetime mental health problems and lead to suicide and violent acts in extreme cases,” he said.
“Unfortunately, Alexandre’s mental condition caused by the years of intimidation was not identified by us nor by the doctors he consulted.”
Addressing members of Quebec’s Muslim community, he offered “all our compassion, our sympathy with them in this terrible, terrible, terrible ordeal.”
A few minutes earlier, Bissonnette himself told Quebec Superior Court Justice François Huot that he is ashamed and regrets what he did.
“I regret that my life has caused so much suffering and pain for so many people,” he said when Huot asked him if he had anything to say before the sentence was pronounced.
Wiping tears from his eyes, Bissonnette said that as a child he had all kinds of dreams for his future. Facing the prospect of life in jail with no chance of parole before he dies, he pleaded for a chance to one day leave prison: “I hope to have a glimmer of hope at the end of the long black tunnel in which I lost myself,” Bissonnette told Huot.
Bissonnette was speaking at the end of a four-week sentencing hearing. Huot will hand down his sentence on Oct. 29.
In the gallery Thursday were members of Quebec City’s Muslim community, including the widow of one of the men who was murdered and people who survived the attack.
On the evening of Jan. 29, 2017, Bissonnette burst into the mosque and opened fire as 46 people, including four children, were completing Sunday evening prayers.
Bissonnette, who was known to denigrate Muslims and immigrants, went on the rampage within hours of having supper with his parents.
He told them he was going to a gun range. Instead, he collected weapons stored at his parents’ house — a 9-mm semi-automatic handgun, a .223-calibre semi-automatic rifle and 108 rounds of ammunition — and set off for the mosque.
Bissonnette’s mother told police her son was unstable, anxious, on depression medication and had been living with his parents for a week.
Bissonnette gave himself up about 90 minutes after the shooting.
After pleading guilty to six counts of first-degree murder, he faces a life sentence, with his parole eligibility to be set anywhere between 25 and 150 years. His lawyers are pushing for the minimum, while the Crown has suggested the maximum, which would be the most severe sentence since Canada abolished the death penalty.
One or both of his parents have been in the courtroom every day during Bissonnette’s court proceedings.
After the attack, Bissonnette’s parents sent condolences in a private letter to the victims and their families via the mosque’s president.
Then in February they issued a written statement.
“The immense pain and suffering caused to the innocent victims and their families by this inexcusable act remains for us, to this day, totally inexplicable,” they wrote in the statement. “So many lives were pointlessly destroyed.”
They added: “Alexandre remains our son whom we love and who will always remain a part of our family. Like all parents, we had hoped to see him succeed and be happy in life. In a sense, we, too, have lost a son.”
The judge presiding over the case has described Bissonnette’s parents as “collateral victims” of the mosque massacre.
Huot made the comment in April when a man who was in the mosque during the attack implied during his testimony that Bissonnette’s father was partly responsible for the massacre, saying he “contributed to the education of a monster.”
Huot interjected, spending several minutes explaining that based on the evidence before him, there was nothing to back up such an assertion.
Huot said he understood that instinctively, people look for someone to blame after an event like the shooting.
“I understand your trauma and your anger, but I think that we will all gain as a society to take a step back,” the judge said. “Alexandre Bissonnette was a 27-yearold man. He wasn’t a young child.”
Huot said that Bissonnette’s parents are, in his view, “collateral victims and I’m convinced they are suffering immensely.”
Bissonnette killed Ibrahima Barry, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Khaled Belkacemi, Abdelkrim Hassane, Azzeddine Soufiane and Aboubaker Thabti. Five other men were injured by gunfire.
Another 35 people, including four children, were in the mosque.