Alexandre Bissonnette, who pleaded guilty to killing six in Quebec attack, cites prime minister’s comments following Trump’s travel ban

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The man who shot and killed six men at a Canadian mosque told police that his attack was motivated by Justin Trudeau’s message of welcome to refugees following Donald Trump’s travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries.

Alexandre Bissonnette pleaded guilty last month to six charges of first degree murder and now faces up to 150 years in prison for the attack in which 19 other people were injured.

In video footage of his police interrogation shown during a sentence hearing on Friday, Bissonnette told officers that he had grown increasingly preoccupied by the the threat of terrorism.

Quebec community rallies for mosque attack hero: 'He sacrificed his legs for us' Read more

But the former social sciences student said the final motivation for his attack was Trudeau’s response to Trump’s travel ban, when he became convinced his family would be threatened if more refugees came to Canada.

“I was, like, sure that they were going to come and kill my parents also, and my family,” he said.



A day after Trump’s travel ban unleashed chaos and uncertainty at airports across the US and the world, Trudeau made international headlines with a series of tweets highlighting the contrast with his own government’s stance.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada,” he tweeted on January 29, 2017.

The following day, Canada announced it would offer temporary residence to those left stranded by Trump’s ban.

“I was watching TV and I learned that the Canadian government was going to take more refugees who couldn’t go to the United States, and they were coming here,” Bissonnette told police.

“I saw that and I, like, lost my mind. I don’t want us to become like Europe. I don’t want them to kill my parents, my family,” he said. “I had to do something, I couldn’t do nothing. It was something that tortured me.”

Bissonnette said that he became obsessed with the 2014 attack in which an Islamist gunman killed a soldier at the national war memorial and then stormed parliament, and the 2016 truck attack that killed 86 people in the French resort city of Nice.

He also told police he had struggled with depression, and hoped medication would quell his anxiety.



“I haven’t felt well for months and months and months and I don’t know what to do,” he told the officer during the interrogation.

He had previously researched the Quebec City Islamic cultural center online and knew its prayer schedule when he drove to it on 29 January 2017, armed with a rifle and handgun.

More than 50 people were at the mosque when the shooting began during evening prayers. The attack, which lasted less than three minutes, killed six men and injured 19 others.

After the shooting, Bissonnette was apprehended by officers six miles from the mosque.

Over the last week, the court saw for the first time the methodical nature of Bissonnette’s attack on the mosque, in which he paused a number of times to reload his semi-automatic Glock handgun and shoot injured people on the ground. Video footage also shows the quick reactions of mosque attendees sheltering children and what prosecutors called the “heroism” of Azzeddine Soufiane, a grocer who was killed by Bissonnette as he attempted to tackle the gunman.