Canadian gets life, no parole for 40 yrs

A 29-year-old who shot dead six worshipers at a Quebec City mosque in the worst anti-Muslim attack in the West got life in prison Friday. Alexandre Bissonnette will have to wait 40 years -- longer than usual -- before he can apply for parole.

In his decision, Judge Francois Huot rejected a prosecution request for a 150-year sentence, which would have been the longest ever in Canada, saying "subjecting a murder to a sentence that exceeds his life expectancy" would be a cruel and unusual punishment under Canadian law.

But he also noted the killer's "visceral hatred of Muslim immigrants."

"You killed six of your compatriots whose only crime was to be different than yourself," Huot said in court.

A university student at the time of the shooting, Bissonnette appeared to have been seduced by nationalist and supremacist ideologies into committing this "unjustified and deadly" massacre that sought to "undermine our fundamental societal values," the judge said.