Quebec City mosque shooter’s sentence reduced to 25 years

The man who murdered six people in a Quebec City mosque in 2017 will be eligible to apply for parole in 25 years rather than 40, the province’s highest court ruled Thursday as it declared the section of the Criminal Code allowing consecutive life sentences unconstitutional.

Alexandre Bissonnette, 30, was sentenced in February 2019 to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 40 years.

That sentence has been reduced to 25 years in Thursday’s Quebec Court of Appeal decision, which took issue with a 2011 amendment to the Criminal Code that allowed life sentences to be served one after another rather than concurrently, as was previously the case.

The three-judge panel wrote that while a decision to set parole eligibility at 100 or more years “may give some people a sense of satisfaction,” it is “grossly disproportionate” because it exceeds the person’s expected lifespan.

“It contemplates a possibility that will never be able to come to fruition,” the decision read. “This is why the provision is absurd and constitutes an attack on human dignity.”

Witnesses to the crime described the former student, then 27, entering the Islamic Cultural Centre and calmly opening fire on the crowd gathered for evening prayers.

Aymen Derbali, who was shot seven times and left paralyzed from the waist down in the attack, described the reduced sentence as “unjust.”

In a brief phone interview, he noted that several recent Canadian mass murderers have received consecutive sentences, including Justin Bourque, who cannot apply for parole for 75 years after killing three RCMP officers in a 2014 shooting.

“Why will (Bissonnette), who killed six in a such a massacre, have 25 years?” Derbali said in a phone interview.