QUEBEC CITY and TORONTO — When he heard Sunday night that the mosque in his neighbourhood had been attacked, the 25-year-old put on his parka and walked over to join the stunned onlookers watching as police cordoned off the scene.
An aspiring journalist, he posted a photo to Twitter in the middle of the night with the message that terror had struck “15 minutes walk from my home.”
On Monday he woke to news that the suspected shooter in an attack that left six Muslim worshippers dead was Alexandre Bissonnette, his friend since high school, the drinking buddy who loved to cook him meals and would join him on hikes.
“I was in a state of shock,” the friend told the National Post Wednesday. “It isn’t easy for me right now, honestly. We never know how or why madness emerges. I thought I knew Alexandre Bissonnette but, at the end of the day, I didn’t know him.”
The man, whose name the National Post agreed not to publish because he fears becoming the target of online abuse, was one of Bissonnette’s closest friends, and three days after the attack he was shaking as he thought of the crime.
He knew Bissonnette, 27, held ultra-nationalist views, that he devoured so-called alt-right media from the United States and that he loathed aspects of Islam. But he had no clue the hatred allegedly ran so deep.
FacebookAlexandre Bissonnette is the suspect in the Quebec City mosque shooting.
“People are describing him as a typical nerd, a bit of a freak, but I don’t think he was that much of a freak. He was normal, he seemed to have been brought up well,” he said.
“He didn’t like the Muslim religion, but he never said he wanted to exterminate them or that he considered them an inferior race.”
In the university chess club Bissonnette belonged to, there were Muslim members he enjoyed playing with. “There was even a girl with a hijab who he played with from time to time. He would say that this girl was nice,” the friend said.
He is now plagued by guilt, wondering if there were signs he missed. He knew Bissonnette admired French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and that he was thrilled with the election of Donald Trump in the United States. “He liked his protectionism, his nationalism,” he said.
Bissonnette was proud of his heritage as a white Quebecer and opposed multi-culturalism. “He was proud of his culture. He was maybe a bit of a Patriote, but nothing that seemed too dangerous,” he said. He never saw evidence his friend was a white supremacist.
He could have asked for help. He had a family, a brother, friends.
Some commentators and politicians have pointed a finger at Quebec City’s notorious shock jocks for stirring anti-Muslim sentiment in the city, but the friend said Bissonnette favoured American media. In his apartment, he constantly had CNN or Fox News on, and online he was a fan of the conspiracy-mongering sites Breitbart and Infowars.
Others have identified a Quebec site Gauchedroitistan (literally, left-rightistan), which is primarily a venue for right-of-centre thought but also has left-leaning members, as a possible source of Bissonnette’s alleged hatred. The friend, who contributes to the site, said Bissonnette was never a member and had nothing to do with it.
Bissonnette liked guns from a young age and enjoyed hunting, but the friend is not a hunter and never paid much attention to the rifles he had. The Journal de Québec quoted a witness saying the gunman entered the mosque armed with a gun resembling a CZ-858 assault rifle, but it jammed and he used a 9 mm pistol.
Phil Carpenter/PostmediaA man is overcome with grief while praying at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec in Quebec City, Feb. 1, 2017, after some people were allowed inside for the first time since a mass shooting at the mosque.
On Wednesday, the mosque reopened, even though blood still stained the prayer carpet and bullet holes scarred walls and windows. Three men returned to pray Wednesday morning despite the reminders of Sunday’s violence. “The message is that we will still pray, even with blood on the floor,” Ahmed Elrefai, a worshipper, told the Canadian Press.
In Montreal, there was evidence that police are on high alert for signs of anti-Muslim hatred as a 46-year-old man was charged with inciting hatred and uttering threats against Muslims. Antonio Padula was charged after police discovered disparaging comments online.
Bissonnette’s friend said it is not true that he had cut off contact with his entourage in the past month. He went out with him last Thursday night to a campus pub at Université Laval. They talked, drank a few beers and hit the dance floor a few times. “He seemed good,” he said.
He is also friends with Bissonnette’s identical twin brother, but he hasn’t spoken to him or their parents since the shootings.
He wishes Bissonnette had reached out to him or his family. “He could have asked for help. He had a family, a brother, friends. He didn’t have enemies. He was not the anti-social being that has been described,” he said.
With the first funerals for the victims to be held Thursday in Montreal, it is now too late. He talks about Bissonnette in the past tense and no longer calls him a friend. “I speak of him as if he’s dead. It’s as if he doesn’t exist any more,” he said. “I feel betrayed.”
– With files from Montreal Gazette
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