Some updates to yesterday’s Quebec mosque shooting story, including the identities of the gunmen:
One of two gunmen who shouted ‘Allahu akbar!’ as they opened fire at a mosque in Quebec City was of Moroccan origin, a witness and local media reported Monday, revealing the first details about the attackers in the massacre that killed six men.
The terror suspects were identified as Mohamed Khadir and Alexandre Bissonnette, the CBC reported. The two men were arrested soon after the shooting at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre Sunday night and were expected to appear in court later Monday, police told reporters.
Also: “The attackers were students at Université Laval, a school in Quebec, a source close to the investigation told Radio Canada, saying one was Moroccan. Police said the suspects were not on their radar.”
And this is an interesting tidbit: “The French-speaking province of Quebec has been embroiled in a lengthy debate about race and religious accommodation. The previous separatist government of the province called for a ban on ostentatious religious symbols such as the hijab in public institutions.”
I also noticed this statement:
Safwan Choudhry, the national spokesperson of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at, one of the largest Muslim communities in Canada, told CTV Toronto he was in disbelief.
“Nothing like this, on this scale, has ever happened in Canada to my knowledge,” Choudhry said on Sunday night. “Never has a mosque been shot up quite like this during prayer time and during worship.”
I’ve read comments on Twitter saying that this was Ahmadiyya mosque. As Ahmadiyya are considered heretical to both Sunni and Shia, that would greatly increase the scope of possible attackers if that were true.
Arguing against that theory, though,m is the fact that Alexandre Bissonnette really doesn’t look like your typical jihadi. In fact, between the blue blazer, the horse, and the chess set, he looks super-mega-extra white.
His Facebook page reveals few details about his reasoning for the shooting, and appears similar to other 20-something college students. His last public post, on January 20, was a photo of a dog wearing a Dominos pizza delivery outfit, with the caption, “I want one! #fridayfeeling.” Other photos show him with family, with friends at parties and in a Halloween costume, as the killer from the movie “Scream.” He has also posted recently about discoveries on Pluto, camping and wanting to travel one day to Torngat Mountains National Park. He also shared a video last year about a brewery owned by members of the band Megadeth. Bissonnette likes the Facebook pages of U.S. President Donald Trump and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, but he does not express support for them elsewhere on his page. Other likes include the Israel Defense Forces, United With Israel and Parti Québécois of Université Laval.
Nothing about him screams “jihadi,” and if he’s a convert, he would seem to be an extremely recent one.
By contrast, there’s next-to-nothing coming out about the purportedly Moroccan-born Mohamed Khadir.
Stay tuned…
Tags: Ahmadiyya, Alexandre Bissonnette, Canada, Crime, Jihad, Mohamed Khadir, Quebec, shooting