Ottawa gunman explains motive for shooting in newly released video

Posted 2015-03-06 18:41 by Grunt Report with 0 comments

The Ottawa gunman who killed a soldier and then stormed Parliament before being shot to death last October said in a video made moments before the attack that Canada’s military had no business in Afghanistan and warned soldiers were “not even safe in your own land.”

That’s what 32-year-old Michael Zehaf-Bibeau said in a cell phone video he made in his car just before the attack on Oct 14.

“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 our innocents,” Zehaf-Bibeau says in the video, which was released by police on Friday. “So we [are] just aiming to hit some soldiers just to show you’re not even safe in your own land and you got to be careful.”

The attack began at Canada’s war memorial, where Zehaf-Bibeau shot and killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, who was assigned to the honor guard there. Zehaf-Bibeau, a dual Libyan-Canadian national and a recent Muslim convert, was eventually gunned down inside Parliament by the sergeant-at-arms of the House of Commons, Kevin Vickers.

Witnesses said an armed Zehaf-Bibeau drove to the Ottawa complex just before 10 a.m. that morning, jumped out of a Toyota with no license plates and ran to the National War Memorial, where he shot a soldier later identified as Cirillo. The 25-year-old father of a 6-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.

In the days before the attack, Zehaf-Bibeau applied for a passport and was hoping to leave for Syria, his mother, Susan Bibeau, told Canadian authorities.

Bibeau had reunited with her son over lunch just days before the attack. The two were reportedly estranged for at least five years.

“No words can express the sadness we are feeling at this time,” Susan Bibeau said in a statement on behalf of herself and Bibeau-Zehaf’s father, Bulgasem Zehaf, after the shooting.

“We are so sad that a man lost his life. He has lost everything and he leaves behind a family that must feel nothing but pain and sorrow. We send our deepest condolences to them although words seem pretty useless. We are both crying for them,” said Bibeau, who works as a federal public servant for the Immigrant & Refugee board and lives in Montreal.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.