Mosque shooter ‘not a monster’
Dad blames mental health issues for massacre
QUEBEC — Insisting his son is “not a monster,” Alexandre Bissonnette’s father blamed bullying and mental problems for the 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 last year.
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 downplayed 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 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.