Police have charged Laval University student Alexandre Bissonnette with six counts of first-degree murder in relation to the Quebec City mosque shooting.
Bissonnette, 27, was arrested after Sunday night's terrorist attack at Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec that left six men dead and another 19 injured, including two who remain hospitalized in serious condition.
He has also been charged with five counts of attempted murder.
The names of the dead have been released by the Quebec coroner's office:
- Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42
- Abdelkrim Hassane, 41
- Khaled Belkacemi, 60
- Aboubaker Thabti, 44
- Azzeddine Soufiane, 57
- Ibrahima Barry, 39
According to multiple media outlets, Bissonnette's home in Cap-Rouge was being searched by investigators today. He reportedly called police on himself and was arrested on Île d'Orléans Bridge, about 12 miles from where the shooting took place.
Media reports paint Bissonnette as a loner with right-wing views.
According to La Presse, Bissonnette is a political science student at Laval University, who was known to troll a Facebook group for refugees. Group administrator François Deschamps told La Presse Bissonnette was generally xenophobic and used the term "feminazi."
The Globe and Mail reported that Bissonnette also expressed support for French nationalist Marine Le Pen, who has compared Muslims praying in the street to a Nazi "occupation."
Two men who knew Bissonnette told le Journal de Québec that he was a Trump supporter.
One, Éric Debroise, said he informed police Bissonnette is an "ultra nationalist white supremacist" while one of Bissonnette's classmates, Jean-Michel Allard-Prus, said "he has right-wing political ideas, pro-Israel, anti-immigration. I had many debates with him about Trump. He was obviously pro-Trump."
Several acquaintances also said Bissonnette didn't have many friends and was bullied in high school.
Another man who police originally described as a suspect, Mohamed Belkhadir, is actually a witness who La Presse reports was helping a shooting victim at the mosque when he ran away thinking a policeman was an attacker.
Belkhadir, 29, an engineering student originally from Morocco, said he was giving his friend first aid when he spotted someone with a weapon and fled to the mosque's parking lot, not realizing the person he saw was a cop.
"They saw me flee, they thought I was suspicious, that's normal. For them, someone who flees is a suspect," he told La Presse.
Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.
from vice http://ift.tt/2kaoE0A
via cheap web hosting
No comments:
Post a Comment