Canadian killer was recent convert to Islam identified as terror risk
By Philip Sherwell, New York
10:11AM BST 23 Oct 2014
Terror came to the heart of the Canadian capital Ottawa on Wednesday as a suspected jihadist gunman shot dead a soldier at the national war memorial and then rampaged through the halls of the federal parliament.
The attacker, who was killed in a gun battle inside parliament, was named as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Canadian-born 32-year-old.
He was a recent convert to Islam from Quebec with a history of drug abuse and whose passport had been seized by authorities after he was designated a "high-risk traveller", Canadian media reported.
The centre of Ottawa was paralysed as heavily armed police fanned out in search of at least one other suspected gunman following what appeared to have been an jiahdist terrorist attack on the heart of the country's government.
Canada was already on edge after a radical Muslim convert killed a soldier and injured a second on Monday in a deliberate hit-and-run car attack in Quebec before being shot to death by police.
The similarity in the reported backgrounds of the two killers has raised fears that "lone-wolf" extremists - possibly a cell of radical converts in Quebec - are targeting Canadian military personnel in retaliation for the government's support of US-led air strikes in Iraq and Syria.
Zehaf-Bibeaus' victim was identified as Cpl Nathan Cirillo, 24, a reserve infantryman and young father who was part of a two-man honour guard carrying an unloaded rifle at the war memorial.
In a chilling detail, a witness described how the gunman earlier raised his arms in a display of triumph, a rifle in the air, after shooting Cpl Cirillo at point blank rage in front of the cenotaph. The location for the start of his rampage appeared horrifically symbolic as it honours the country's war dead
Canadian killer was recent convert to Islam identified as terror risk
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