Quebec mosque shooter sentenced to life, no parole for 40 years

A Canadian man who gunned down six people in a mosque in Quebec City in 2017 was sentenced to life in prison with no parole for 40 years, CTV reported on Friday.

Alexandre Bissonnette, 29, pleaded guilty in March last year to six counts of first-degree murder and six of attempted murder. He walked into the mosque at the Islamic Cultural Centre during evening prayers on Jan. 29, 2017 and opened fire.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Francois Huot delivered the ruling Friday in a packed Quebec courtroom. He called the shooting attack premeditated, gratuitous and insidious.

The judge told Bissonnette, wearing a blue blazer and white shirt, to leave the prisoners' box and stand in front of him as he read the ruling. The judge said the day of the murders "will forever be written in blood in the history of this city, this province, this country."

The justice said that in the years leading up to the shooting, Bissonnette increasingly drank alcohol and experienced anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts.

He noted that witnesses at his sentencing hearing testified that he had been severely bullied in school, and had a documented history of mental health problems. He also lacked empathy, the judge said, quoting Bissonnette's statement after the shootings: "I regret not having killed more people."

The justice concluded that a sentence of 50 years or more would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. In the end, he sentenced Bissonnette to concurrent life sentences for five murders, and on the sixth added 15 years to bring the total to 40.

The longest prison sentence in Canada to date is 75 years without parole, which has been given to at least five triple killers since the law was changed to allow consecutive sentences.