Kuwait Times

Canada shooter rented flat near Quebec mosque

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QUEBEC CITY: The FrenchCana­dian student accused of killing six people during evening prayers in a Quebec City mosque had rented an apartment nearby, neighbors said yesterday, a sign he may have been targeting the house of worship. Alexandre Bissonnett­e, 27, was charged on Monday with six counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder with a restricted weapon after Sunday evening’s massacre at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Quebec. Police said he acted alone.

The mass shooting, which was rare for Canada and which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called a “terrorist attack,” prompted an outpouring of support for the mosque and for the country’s 1 millionstr­ong Muslim community. Authoritie­s in Quebec have called for a spirit of inclusivit­y and police have tightened security at all religious institutio­ns in the province.

Bissonnett­e, who said he was a fan of US President Donald Trump and far-right French politician Marine Le Pen, had moved into an apartment in the beige block near the mosque in July and drove a Mitsubishi truck, said a neighbor, who asked not to be named.

Another neighbor on the fourth floor never spoke to Bissonnett­e but frequently heard him playing the piano. A neighbor of his parents told the Canadian Broadcasti­ng Corp he had lived in the apartment with his twin brother.

Police declined to discuss a motive for the shooting, but friends and online acquaintan­ces told Canadian media that Bissonnett­e had expressed anti-immigratio­n sentiments, especially toward Muslim refugees. Vigils were held in Quebec City, Montreal and other cities on Monday evening. The large turnout showed people rejected hate speech and wanted to be inclusive, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard said. “I think it’s a turning point for Quebec, to see people rallying around values like that,” he told reporters in Quebec City, the provincial capital, yesterday. “Our society is not perfect. No society is perfect ... racism, xenophobia and exclusion exist here. We have to recognize that and act together to highlight the path we want society to take,” Couillard said.

Bissonnett­e did not hide his hostility toward Muslims during his long interrogat­ion by police, Montreal’s La Presse newspaper said, quoting a source close to the investigat­ion. He was also interested in guns, and practiced shooting at a local club near the provincial capital, La Presse reported. Police have not released specific details of the weapon used in the attack, other than to say it was a restricted firearm.

A social science student and former cadet known in online circles for his right-wing views, Bissonnett­e was described by a former classmate as a “nerdy outcast”. Bissonnett­e made a brief appearance in court on Monday under tight security. Prosecutor­s said all of the evidence was not yet ready, and Bissonnett­e, a student at Universite Laval, was set to appear again on Feb 21. No charges were read in court and Bissonnett­e did not enter a plea. His lawyer, Jean Petit, declined to comment at the courthouse on Monday.

Quebec’s public safety minister, Martin Coiteux, said security at all religious institutio­ns across the province had been heightened, particular­ly at mosques. He added that while police always treated reports of religious harassment and hate speech seriously, they had not always done a good job of letting communitie­s know the results of their probes. “We will pay particular attention to feedback,” he told yesterday’s news conference.

In Montreal, Quebec’s largest city, police were increasing their presence at mosques and other Muslim institutio­ns and watching for possible hate speech online. “When you have an incident like the one in Quebec, people are worried ... we will maintain a very high level of vigilance,” the city’s police chief, Philippe Pichet, told French-language public broadcaste­r RadioCanad­a.

Both law enforcemen­t and intelligen­ce agencies in the United States believe the suspect was sympatheti­c to right-wing nationalis­t ideology, and that this was likely a major factor in his motive for the attack, US officials said. On his Facebook page, Bissonnett­e indicated he liked Le Pen, Trump, the separatist Parti Quebecois, as well as Canada’s leftwing New Democratic Party, the

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