Quebec mosque shooting suspect identified, charged with murdering six people

A French-Canadian university student was the sole suspect in a shooting at a Quebec City mosque and was charged with the premeditated murder of six people, Canadian authorities said late on Jan. 30, in what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called "a terrorist attack." 

Court documents identified the gunman in the attack on the evening of Jan. 29 prayers as Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, and charged him with six murder counts and five counts of attempted murder with a restricted weapon. The slightly-built Bissonnette made a brief appearance in court under tight security wearing a white prison garment and looking downcast. 

Prosecutors said all of the evidence was not yet ready and Bissonnette, an anthropology and political science major student at Université Laval, was set to appear again on Feb. 21. No charge was read in court and Bissonnette did not enter a plea. 

"The charges laid correspond to the evidence available," said Thomas Jacques, a representative of the prosecutor's office, when asked why Bissonnette was not charged with terrorism-related offences. 

The 27-year-old suspect, who has espoused support for the French far-right party of Marine Le Pen and had liked U.S. President Donald Trump on his Facebook page, was known to those who monitor extremist groups in Quebec, said Frangois Deschamps, an official with a refugee advocacy group. 

"It's with pain and anger that we learn the identity of terrorist Alexandre Bissonnette, unfortunately known to many activists in Quebec for taking nationalist, pro-Le Pen and anti-feminist positions at Laval University and on social media," Deschamps wrote on the Facebook page of the group, Bienvenues aux Refugiis, or Welcome to Refugees, according to The Associated Press.
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