More details have emerged about Ottawa shooter Michael Zehaf-Bilbeau, who yesterday shot and killed a Canadian soldier at the National War Memorial at Parliament Hill.
Zehaf-Bilbeau reportedly had a “religious awakening” and sought to travel to Libya, where he said he planned to study Islam and learn Arabic. His behavior was described as increasingly erratic, and his mosque had asked him not to return.
After that, Zehaf-Bilbeau sought to travel to Syria to fight, though he reportedly had recently had his passport seized as a “high-risk traveler.” Unlike Quebec hit-and-run attacker Martin Couture-Rouleau, however, he was apparently not under ongoing surveillance.
The Canadian government is pushing for draconian new anti-terror laws, which they were pushing before the shooting happened, but are now presenting, predictably, as a response to the incident.
What was the problem? This guy just wanted to help out NATO in Libya & John McCain’s friends in Syria.
So does the Canadian Prime Minister and Parliament!
Why didn’t they just pack him up and send him off on the next military flight?
National Security makes the best self-licking ice-cream cones but the brain-freeze still makes me weep.
What gets me is that it was US national security which told Canadian authorities who the gunman was. Did he have a record in the USA as well, and how did he cross the border with no passport?
One has to wonder if they were not simply waiting for one of these kooks to do something in country after seizing their passports so they could push forward the anti-terror law. Not saying they put him up to it, but why would they have seized his passport and then just let him run around without any surveillance? At the very least it is criminal negligence and proof that security officials are useless buffoons. As a Canadian I can say with confidence that Canada has been no better than America Lite for a long time, and it will only get worse after this.
United States locked up a 100,000 american citizens during W War 2 because they were Japanese . How many terrorist acts did the Japanese commit before we imprisoned them ? J Edgar Hoover said they were not a threat . Muslims have committed thousands of terrorist acts but no western government dares even to admit it is happening . What has changed so much that we once locked up innocent citizens that might become terrorists and now call terrorism work place violence and refuse to believe Islam is promoting terrorism . NO wonder Islam is the fasted growing religion ,being a Islamic terrorist is the safest place to be .
Canadian media reported that the father of Zihaf-Bibeau (Smith) had fought in the latest Libyan 'revolution'. And tonight it was reported that he had tried to obtain a Libyan passport at the embassy in Ottawa. He was a very busy boy in the 36 hours he was in the capital.