Quebec City mosque shooting
The Quebec City mosque shooting was an attack by a single gunman on the evening of January 29, 2017, at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, a mosque in the Sainte-Foy neighbourhood of Quebec City, Canada. Six worshippers were killed and five others seriously injured after evening prayers when the gunman entered the prayer hall shortly before 8:00 pm and opened fire for about two minutes with a 9mm Glock 17 Gen 4 semi-automatic pistol. Approximately 40 people were reported present at the time of the shooting.
The Quebecois terrorist, 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder. On February 8, 2019, Bissonnette was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 40 years. Upon appeal, the Court of Appeal of Quebec found 40 years without parole to be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment, adjusting the sentence to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years. Quebec prosecutors sought to reinstate the original sentence with an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. The decision was upheld on May 27, 2022 in R v Bissonnette, meaning Bissonnette will be eligible for parole in 2042.
The shooting prompted widespread discussion of anti-Muslim bigotry, racism, and right-wing terrorism in Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the shooting a terrorist attack, but Bissonnette was not charged with the terrorism provision of the Criminal Code. The decision not to charge Bissonnette with terrorism was criticized by Canadian Muslim groups. On the fourth anniversary of the attack, the Trudeau government announced plans to commemorate the day of the attack as The National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec Mosque Attack and of Action Against Islamophobia.
Background
The province of Quebec prioritizes immigrants who speak fluent French, and therefore has many Muslim immigrants from former French colonies such as Senegal, as well as Syria, Lebanon, and the North African countries of the Maghreb. A number of Muslim French citizens with family origins in the former French colonies have immigrated to Quebec from France. Arab residents of the province make up a larger share of its population than in any other Canadian province. Like most immigrants to Quebec, they are concentrated in Montreal, Quebec's largest city.Quebec City has a Muslim population of about 10,000. It has a low crime rate — in 2015, there were only two homicides in the city – but saw a threefold increase in the number of reported hate crimes against Muslims in 2017. It also has an active far-right community, compared to other Canadian cities. A local chapter of Soldiers of Odin said it wanted to conduct safety patrols of neighbourhoods where Muslims live.
A competitive media market of local right-wing radio talkshow hosts features regular attacks on Islam and Muslims as being incompatible with the values of Quebec society.
The Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City's Grande Mosquée de Québec in the city's west-end Sainte-Foy neighbourhood is one of several mosques in Quebec City. The mosque is close to the Université Laval, which has many international students from French-speaking, Muslim-majority African countries. In June 2016, during Ramadan, it was the target of an incident in which a pig's severed head was left outside the mosque. The incident has been described as a hate crime because of pigs being deemed haram in Islam. There had been at least seven prior incidents at the mosque. Because of the incidents, the mosque had installed eight CCTV security cameras. Two weeks before the shooting, the mosque had finalized plans to install a fortified main entrance and a back escape exit for Ramadan in June.
Shooting
The shooting took place at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City in the Ste-Foy suburb of Quebec City between 7:54 and 7:56 p.m EST on Sunday 29 January 2017 after nightly evening prayers. The shooter, 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, killed six people and injured five while firing five 10-round magazines from a 9mm Glock 17 Gen 4 semi-automatic pistol. The perpetrator fled the scene and gave himself up to police later that evening, and pleaded guilty as charged to six counts of first degree murder and six counts of attempted murder with a restricted firearm on January 30, 2017. Detailed facts of the attack using witness testimony and six security camera recordings were made public in April 2018 by the prosecution during the perpetrator's sentencing hearing and put to rest conspiracy theories that a second shooter was involved. Superior Court judge François Huot prohibited publication of the video footage, but allowed the press to publish descriptions. Details were summarized in the sentence handed down on February 8, 2019.Context
In the month before the shooting, Bissonnette was on leave from his job at Héma-Québec with an anxiety disorder following an altercation with a co-worker. In this month he obsessively visited the Twitter accounts of several pro-Israel right wing media personalities including Ben Shapiro, Tommy Robinson, Laura Ingraham, Alex Jones, Mike Cernovich, Gavin McInnes and Kellyanne Conway. Bissonnette checked in on the Twitter account of Ben Shapiro 93 times in the month leading up to the shooting. He was also on vacation from his university program of study in political science. He was due to go back to work the day after the shooting. During his time off, he would regularly visit Islamophobic websites and search the Web for information on mass shooters. On the day of the shooting, he had breakfast while reading web content dealing with jihadi attacks, mass murder, and suicide. Through the afternoon, he became drunk by consuming sake as he read about mass shooters. When he learned from television that the Canadian government would begin to welcome refugee claimants fearing Trump administration immigration policies and arriving at the U.S. border, he decided to proceed with the long-planned shooting. At 4:14 PM, the shooter visited the Facebook page of the Quebec City Mosque. At 5:28 p.m., he went to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Twitter account and read the tweet welcoming those seeking refuge in Canada. He went to his parents' house for dinner, and went to his bedroom to look at more websites on mass shootings and suicide.At 7:00 p.m., Bissonnette turned off his computer and left his parents' home armed with a concealed 9mm Glock 17 Gen 4 semi-automatic pistol in his pocket and a.223-caliber vz. 58 semi-automatic rifle that he had packed into a guitar case. He told his parents he was going to run errands and practise shooting at a gun club he frequented weekly. He drove his parents' Mitsubishi directly to the mosque. At 7:37 p.m., he hesitated to follow through with the shooting and drove to a nearby convenience store to buy and quickly drink a Vodka Ice.
He then returned to the mosque. Believing he had been seen in possession of firearms and that he would eventually be caught, he decided to go through with the shooting.
Prayers at the mosque started at 7:30 p.m. and ran for about 15 minutes. About half the attendees then left; 46 people remained for individual prayers and socializing in the large prayer hall. It was a cold, snowy evening at −22 °C and no one lingered outside the building.
Attack on mosque
Just before 7:54 p.m, Bissonnette walked up the snow-covered driveway to the front of the mosque, opened the case carrying the.223-caliber vz. 58 semi-automatic rifle, and loaded it. Two brothers, Mamadou Barry, age 42, and Ibrahima Barry, age 39, put on their coats in the lobby of the mosque as others in the main room socialized or prayed privately. Just after 7:54, they left the building. The gunman pointed his rifle at them and pulled the trigger, but the gun jammed. Frightened, the brothers backed against the front door, slipped on the ice, and fell. The shooter dropped the rifle, feigned a smile to indicate it was a joke, and took out a 9mm Glock 17 Gen 4 semi-automatic pistol from under his coat. The Barry brothers quickly got up to flee, but Bissonnette opened fire, hitting Ibrahima in the left arm, back, and abdomen, causing him to collapse. He then approached the fallen victim, shooting him in the head. Mamadou Barry, hit in the shoulder and thigh, attempted to flee before collapsing several feet away. Bissonnette then shot him in the head.Two other worshippers at the doorway saw the gunman approach and fled down the lobby corridor to the main prayer room. Panic then ensued in the prayer room. The shooter entered the mosque, firing all ten rounds in his semi-automatic pistol. He used the ensuing chaos to retreat into the lobby and reload. Several men rushed into the mihrab to hide, while others escaped through emergency exits. One man managed to grab a child and hide her behind a column.
At 7:55 p.m., Bissonnette re-entered the prayer room. He fired 30 rounds in 30 seconds during the second spree particularly targeting people attempting to take cover near the mihrab and the imam's office. He calmly shot at people hiding in the mihrab, killing Khaled Belkacemi, a 60-year-old University of Laval professor. Abdelkrim Hassane, aged 41, was killed near the imam's office. Aymen Derbali, crouched near the shooter, attempted to distract him from more crowded areas of the mosque by lurching towards him, but was shot in the knee and chin. As Derbali slumped and crawled on the floor, Bissonette shot him six more times, but Derbali would survive. Bissonnette then targeted 44-year-old Aboubaker Thabti, murdering him at point-blank range with three bullets to the skull. About 20 seconds into the second phase of the attack, 57-year-old Azzeddine Soufiane, a local grocer and butcher, rushed Bissonnette, propelling the shooter into a shoe rack against the wall. Bissonnette managed to push Soufiane back far enough to free his hand and shoot him twice. The gunman then shot Nizar Gali in the back and shot Said Akjour in the left shoulder as he hid in the mihrab.
Bissonnette retreated into the lobby a second time, reloading his weapon and returning to the prayer room in four seconds. Finding Soufiane still moving, the assailant put a final bullet in his head. The attacker then moved to the middle of the prayer room to get a better angle, but most people who crowded in the mihrab were well protected.
At 7:56, the shooter finally exited through the main entrance and fled the scene in his father's car, leaving his vz. 58 semi-automatic rifle and guitar case behind. He kept one round in his pistol to end his life in the Charlevoix woods north of the city. Police would later recover a total of four magazines and 48 9-mm casings from the pistol inside the mosque, as well as 28 rounds still in the rifle outside, with the one jammed round.
Seconds later, Mohamed Belkadhir, a University of Laval engineering student who had left the meeting to shovel snow, arrived at the mosque entrance and called 911 when he found the Barry brothers. He checked inside the mosque, then returned to tend the first two victims, removing his coat to cover Mamadou, who still showed signs of life. When police arrived with their weapons drawn, Belkadhir fled, believing the killer had returned. He was caught and arrested as a suspect and held overnight, but was released the next morning. Reports of the arrest led to rumours and online conspiracy theories about a second shooter. Police released an affidavit in March 2017 to confirm details of this arrest.