Alexandre Bissonnette

Alexandre Bissonnette is a French-Canadian who pled guilty to the Quebec City mosque shooting.

Quotes

• I'd like to ask for your forgiveness for all the harm I caused you, even though I know what I did is unforgivable,
  In spite of everything that was said, I am not a terrorist, nor Islamophobic … [I am] more a person who was carried away by fear and a horrible form of despair.
  I don't know why I committed such a senseless act.
  • 28 March 2018

• Your honour,
  At this point that I am free to clear my heart and my mind,
  I would like to say to you, your honour and everyone:
  Every minute of my existence, I bitterly regret what I did, the lives that I destroyed, the grief and the immense pain that I inflicted on so many people, including the members of my own family.
  I am ashamed, ashamed of what I did. I do not know why I committed such a senseless act.
  And to this day, I have a hard time believing it.
  In spite of what has been said about me, I am not a terrorist, nor an Islamophobe, rather a person who was carried away by fear, negative thoughts and a horrible form of despair.
  For a long time, I had suicidal thoughts and an obsession with death.
  As if I was fighting with a demon who ended up getting the best of me, who ended up winning against me.
  I very much wish I could go back in time and change things.
  Sometimes, I feel that all of this is a bad dream, a long nightmare.
  I would like to ask you for forgiveness for all the harm that I have done to you, but I know that what I did is unforgivable.
  If by pleading guilty, I can do a bit of good in all of this, then it will at least be something.
  This is why I am pleading guilty before you.
  • 28 March 2018 (translated from French)

About

• He was a really good guy,
  A very generous kind of guy, always listening, polite.
  • 18 May 2018 by boyhood friend Michel Kingma-Lord

• It never occurred to me he might be violent
  • Vincent Boissoneault, also childhood friend, kept in touch on Facebook (same Globe and Mail article above)

• I'd hear a piano
  It got to the point where I had trouble sleeping
  It was beautiful so I didn't mind it that much
  • Sarah-Jeanne Viau, downstairs neighbor

• He never seemed to take it like personally,
  He had an almost happy attitude about it.
  Someone [would] tell him, 'You're ugly,' and he would say, 'You too are ugly.'
  • Mikael Labrecque Berger, about bullying

• For me, it wasn’t a big surprise, you know? Because if we look at people who do these kinds of things, usually they always seem to have the same patterns. Introverts, a little bit anti-social, different in a way, isolated,
  ..
  but I didn't recall Alexandre to respond in any violent way,
  He was an outsider for sure. He dressed differently, he behaved differently. And people didn’t seem to understand the way he was at that time, that’s for sure.
  Usually he had a little smile but it's difficult to say what is going through his head.
  • 31 January 2017 by Toma Popescu, high school acquaintance

• Alex was an internet troll. He liked to confront people online, but was not a violent kind of person. He likes to hear himself talk
  • Vincent Boissoneault, in CTV News interview

• He was a pro-Israel and pro-Trump guy,
  He didn't have his arms open to immigrants you could say. He was against all gun control. He could have been a perfect Republican.
  When we were in person and working on the paper, he was a normal guy, he was timid. An introvert who didn't speak to a lot of people. I never would have talked to him if I wasn't forced to be with him by the professors,
  He didn't make a lot of friends in our classes and didn't ask a lot of questions but on Facebook he was more aggressive, like a troll. He was always challenging people on Facebook, he could be very rude.
  he didn't want to have a constructive argument with people, he just wanted to say anything and start a fire.
  He never spoke of violence as a political way of expressing himself. He never talked about violence and seemed to be against violence in general. So I think that in the last year, there was a radicalization process.
  • 30 January 2017 by Jean-Michel Allard Prus, classmate