Ottawa gunman reportedly knew jihadist, wanted to travel to Libya

Posted 2014-10-23 12:58 by Grunt Report

The man who stormed Canada’s government complex Wednesday, killing a soldier and sending Ottawa into an all-out panic, was a small-time criminal who recently converted to Islam and desperately wanted to move to the Middle East, according to reports.

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the 32-year-old whose morning raid on Parliament Hill ended when a sergeant-at-arms gunned him down as he was unleashing a fusillade of bullets in the halls of Canada’s federal government, had recently undergone a religious awakening that left at least one friend alarmed, the Globe and Mail reported.

“We were having a conversation in a kitchen, and I don’t know how he worded it: He said the devil is after him,” Dave Bathurst told the newspaper. “I think he must have been mentally ill.”

Witnesses said an armed Zehaf-Bibeau drove to the Ottawa complex just before 10 a.m Wednesday, jumped out of a Toyota with no license plates and ran to the National War Memorial, where he shot a soldier later identified as Cpl. Nathan Cirillo. The 25-year-old father of a six-year-old boy, who was a member of Canada’s Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders regiment, died later at Civic Hospital.

Zehaf-Bibeau then ran to the East Block of Parliament Hill, firing more shots and sending politicians, journalists and other workers scattering, although no one else was killed. He was brought down in the rear building of the complex, near a library, by Kevin Vickers, 58, who serves as the House of Commons’ sergeant-at-arms.

“MPs and Hill staff owe their safety, even lives, to Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers who shot attacker just outside the MPs’ caucus rooms,” New Democrat MP Craig Scott tweeted.

The raid came just one day after Canada raised its terror alert and two days after another jihadist convert, Martin Couture-Rouleau, killed uniformed Canadian soldier Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent in a hit-and-run in Quebec that police believe was intentional. Couture-Rouleau, who was shot to death by police, had recently had his passport seized to bar him from travelling to the Middle East to join the Islamic State.

Canada rasied its alert level after the attack, and cited chatter from Islamic State sources calling on supporters to strike back at Canada in retaliation for its decision to join coalition forces performing airstrikes in Iraq.

Born in Quebec as Michael Joseph Hall, the gunman is the son of a Canadian immigration official, Susan Bibeau. She is the deputy chairperson of a division of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, and divorced Bibeau’s father, according to the Globe and Mail.

It was not immediately clear if Zehaf-Bibeau knew Martin Couture-Rouleau, another Muslim convert from Quebec who killed one soldier and injured another in a hit-and-run attack Monday. But Bathurst said Zehaf-Bibeau did know Hasibullah Yusufzai, a British Columbia resident who was charged by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in July with traveling to Syria to join Islamic State. Yusufzai remains at large despite an international arrest warrant being issued for his capture.

Zehaf-Bibeau grew up in Ottawa and Montreal, and had spent time in Libya before moving to Western Canada to become a miner and laborer, said Bathurst, who met the gunman in a Vancouver-area mosque about three years ago.

Bathurst said Zehaf-Bibeau told him six weeks ago at a British Columbia mosque that he wanted to go to Libya to study Islam and Arabic. But reports from Canada say  Zehaf-Bibeau was blocked from traveling by government officials who have been monitoring extremists to prevent them from joining the Islamic State.

Had Zehaf-Bibeau taken his apparent jihad plans abroad, he would have been following in the footsteps of his father, believed to be Belgasem Zahef, who was quoted by the Washington Times in 2011, speaking from the Libya, where he had travelled to join the rebellion against Col. Moammar Qaddafi.

Bathurst told the Globe and Mail Zehaf-Bibeau’s “erratic” behavior prompted elders at the British Columbia mosque to kick him out, but he did not describe the disturbing behavior. He did say Zehaf-Bibeau was arrested a few years ago after calling police to confess to a past crime, possibly a 2011 robbery in Vancouver. In 2012, he was sentenced to one day in jail.

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