‘THIS IS IN RETALIATION’
Hill gunman blames attack on Afghan war; RCMP seeks accomplices
The head of the RCMP said Friday he believes other people “influenced” Parliament Hill gunman Michael Zehaf-Bibeau in last October’s attack, and the Mounties will have to determine whether any will face criminal charges.
The active investigation involving 130 full-time investigators is the reason the RCMP withheld 18 seconds of Zehaf-Bibeau’s final video manifesto, in which he said his actions were “retaliation” for Canada’s military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that he wanted to “hit some soldiers” to show Canadians they are not safe in their own country.
Zehaf-Bibeau made the video shortly before the attacks, sitting alone in his car, parked behind a building just steps from Ottawa’s police headquarters.
While the release of an edited portion of the video Friday answered some questions about Zehaf-Bibeau’s actions on Oct. 22, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson said investigators were trying to determine whether anyone had “aided ... or conspired” with Zehaf-Bibeau.
“The RCMP believes on the evidence that Zehaf-Bibeau was a terrorist. We would have charged him with terrorist offences” had he been taken alive, Paulson said during an hour-long appearance before the Commons public safety committee.
“Anyone who aided him, abetted him, counselled him, facilitated his crimes or conspired with him is also in our view a terrorist and where the evidence exists, we will charge them with terrorist offences.”
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Paulson was more direct: “I am persuaded he was influenced by other individuals towards these crimes. In that sense, I’m of the view that there are other individuals involved.”
Given the ongoing investigation, Paulson said 18 seconds from the video had been edited out — 13 seconds from the beginning and five seconds from the end — a move he couldn’t yet publicly explain.
“If I were to explain it to you, I would hurt the investigation and so I don’t want to do that,” he said.
“The essence of what he had to say, I think, is before you now.”
The 32-year-old Zehaf-Bibeau recorded the cellphone video sitting alone in his car minutes before he shot and killed a Canadian soldier, Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, at the National War Memorial, and then stormed Parliament Hill where MPs were holding their weekly caucus meetings.
The video released Friday lasted about 55 seconds and was shot in a parking lot near Metcalfe and Catherine streets. The video shows him sitting in the driver’s seat, the top of his shirt unbuttoned, hair combed back and his moustache shaved off.
“This is in retaliation for Afghanistan and because (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper wants to send his troops to Iraq,” Zehaf-Bibeau said in a calm voice in the video, his eyes moving around as quickly as his words, but his voice not wavering.
“So we are retaliating, the mujahedeen of this world. Canada’s officially become one of our enemies by fighting and bombing us and creating a lot of terror in our countries and killing us and killing our innocents. So, just aiming to hit some soldiers just to show you that you’re not even safe in your own land, and you gotta be careful.”
He goes on to reference Allah, and says, “It’s a disgrace you guys have forgotten God and have you let (sic) every indecency and things running your land.
“We don’t, we don’t go for this. We are good people, righteous people, believers of God and believing his law and his Prophets, peace be upon them all. That’s my message to all of you in this, inshallah, we’ll not cease until you guys decide to be a peaceful country and stay to your own and I — and stop going to other countries and stop occupying and killing the righteous of us who are trying to bring back religious law in our countries.”
He ends with a “thank you,” before his eyes look skyward and the video cuts out.
Zehaf-Bibeau left the cellphone, unlocked, in his car.
Shortly before 10 a.m. on Oct. 22, Zehaf-Bibeau shot Cirillo, who was standing guard at the National War Memorial. In less than a minute, Zehaf-Bibeau was inside the Centre Block, where he was chased down the historic Hall of Honour as MPs met nearby.
Outside the Library of Parliament, Zehaf-Bibeau was shot “many, many times,” Paulson said. The exact number should come out when the Ontario Provincial Police release the results of their probe of what happened on Parliament Hill that day, which is expected out sometime this month.
Zehaf-Bibeau also had a long knife tied to his wrist when he was killed. Paulson told MPs the toxicology report on Zehaf-Bibeau found no evidence of drugs or alcohol, nor did investigators find evidence of drug use in the days leading up to the attack. Paulson said there was no evidence of ZehafBibeau suffered from any mental health issues.
The RCMP have been unable to identify where Zehaf-Bibeau obtained the Winchester .30-30 rifle used in the attacks.
What the RCMP have been able to determine is that in August 2014, Zehaf-Bibeau ran into problems renewing his Canadian passport after submitting an application in Vancouver. He rode a Greyhound bus and hitchhiked his way across the country starting on Sept. 23, and arriving in Ottawa on Oct. 2. Within two hours, Zehaf-Bibeau went to the Libyan embassy.
There, he was told it would take three to four weeks to renew his expired Libyan passport due to “discrepancies in his identification documents,” Paulson said.
Zehaf-Bibeau stayed in touch with people in Ottawa and in B.C. Paulson suggested these people were being identified and investigated for their connections to Zehaf-Bibeau’s actions on Oct. 22.
Zehaf-Bibeau had become “increasingly aligned with terrorist ideology” in the last years of his life while living in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and in Alberta, Paulson said. Paulson said people around Zehaf-Bibeau should have been concerned by his fascination with extremists, his fervent religious talk, and his desire to travel as part of these changes in his life.
No one, however, came forward to police.
“This man’s radicalization towards criminality and violence, it was a very slow burn and I think that as that began to intensify, people ought to have been concerned,” Paulson told reporters. “People close to him — both friends, people that he ran across — ought to have taken it upon themselves to say, ‘This is getting to a point where we ought to do something.’”