OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada’s Supreme Court on Friday upheld a decision by a lower court to speed up the parole eligibility for the man convicted of gunning down six people in a mosque in 2017 and deemed a 2011 law that allowed lengthy parole sentencing as unconstitutional.
Canada’s top court was adjudicating on the case challenging a 2020 decision by a Quebec court to lower Alexandre Bissonnette’s parole eligibility to 25 years from the original sentence of 40 years of ineligibility.
Bissonnette, 32, pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder for the attack on members of a Quebec City mosque in 2017 in one of Canada’s rare mass shootings.
He was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after 40 years behind bars in 2019 before a Quebec appeals court lowered that, describing the original sentence as “cruel and unusual.”
At the time of the attack, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced the shooting as a terrorist act. The judge in the original trial said Bissonnette’s actions – entering the mosque at the end of prayers and shooting congregants – was motivated by prejudice, particularly toward Muslim immigrants.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Mark Porter)
