Alexandre Bissonnette pleads not guilty to killing six Muslim men

The young man accused of shooting and killing six Muslims at a Quebec mosque last year pleaded not guilty to all charges on Monday, as preliminary motions in his trial began.

Alexandre Bissonnette’s lawyers will present pretrial motions in a Quebec City courtroom over the next three days, which could have an effect on what evidence will be heard by the jury. Jury selection could begin early next week.

Bissonnette, a University of Laval student, is accused of killing six men in a Quebec City mosque in January 2017. The 28-year-old faces 12 charges — six counts of first degree murder and six counts of attempted murder. Five of the attempted murder charges are related to people who were injured in the attack, while the sixth charge is meant to cover everyone else who was in the mosque at the time of the shooting.

Judge François Huot has requested that 600 prospective jurors be summoned — three times more than what’s normally seen in Quebec trials, with many potential jurors expected to ask for an exemption, according to Radio-Canada.

A heavy security presence is expected at the high-profile trial — courtroom observers will be required to pass through a metal detector and provide ID.

Bissonnette is accused of killing Azzeddine Soufiane, Khaled Belkacemi, Aboubaker Thabti, Abdelkrim Hassane, Mamadou Tanou Barry, and Ibrahima Barry, who were all at the mosque for evening prayers.

'NIGHTMARE'

A police search warrant made public last fall revealed that Bissonnette owned two registered handguns and one long gun, which he kept in a locked storage unit in his mother’s basement, according to his father.

Bissonnette’s mother told police that he ate dinner with his parents on the evening of the massacre said he was going to go Les Castor de Charlesbourg, a shooting range where he was a member. He never returned.

But the shooting range was closed, and Bissonnette did not contact his mother again that night.

Criminal lawyers who spoke to VICE last week said his lawyers could use a number of tactics, including trying to create reasonable doubt that Bissonnette planned the attacks to fight the first degree murder charges or arguing that Bissonnette was not criminally responsible for the shooting due to his mental state.

At the end of January, just over a year after the shooting took place, Bissonnette’s parents broke their silence about the attack. In a letter to Radio-Canada, his parents said the year had been a “nightmare,” and that they had privately sent letters of condolence to the victims’ families.

The couple and Bissonnette’s twin brother were attending counselling to cope with the events, and had been targeted by death threats, they said.

“Alexandre remains our son that we love and that will always be a part of our family. Like all parents, we had hoped to see him succeed and be happy in life,” they wrote. “In a sense, we have also lost a son.”

Mosque president Mohamed Labidi said at the time that the focus should be on the trial.

“We understand their pain. We are all parents, and we know that if it was our child, we wouldn’t be able to be happy for the rest of our lives,” Labidi told the Globe and Mail. “But the person who committed this act has to take responsibility for it.”