THE CHIEF SUSPECT in Sunday’s murder of six Muslims at a Canadian mosque is an anti-feminist student with nationalist sensibilities who recently ‘liked’ the Facebook page of President Donald Trump.
27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, an anthropology and political science student at the University of Laval in Quebec City, has been charged with the murder of six people during evening prayers at the mosque, and the attempted murder of a further five.
He remains in police custody. The reasons for the attack are as yet unknown.
Local Canadian media say that Bissonnette is a Quebec nationalist and anti-feminist who recently ‘liked’ US President Donald Trump’s page on Facebook.
Bissonnette’s fellow students have said that that he “had political ideas on the right” and was obviously “pro-Trump”.
He had also expressed support in the past for French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.
Bissonnette was known to those who monitor extremist groups in Quebec, according to Francois Deschamps, an official with a refugee advocacy group.
“It’s with pain and anger that we learn the identity of terrorist Alexandre Bissonnette, unfortunately known to many activists in Quebec for taking nationalist, pro-Le Pen and anti-feminist positions at Laval University and on social media,” Deschamps wrote on the Facebook page of the group, Bienvenues aux Refugiés, or Welcome to Refugees.
Despite this, authorities have said that the student suspect was unknown to police prior to the attack.
The grandson of a decorated World War II veteran, Bissonnette appeared in a Facebook photo (his page has since been deactivated) as a boy dressed as an army cadet, a military leadership program for Canadian youths. But cadets are not members of the Canadian Armed Forces and do not receive military training.
The suspected shooter has a twin brother, with whom he spent a lot of his time, former classmte Mikael Labrecque Berger told Le Journal de Quebec.
More than 50 people were present in the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre when the fatal attack began.
In addition to the six people killed, 19 more were wounded, all of them male, while two of the victims remain in a critical condition. The victims range in age from 39 to 60.
With AP and - © AFP, 2017
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