In a bygone, saner era, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau’s murder of Canadian soldier Nathan Cirillo and subsequent shooting rampage inside the Parliament would have been treated as a drug-related murder. Not so in the age of terrorism.
Instead, the authorities used the long-time crack addict and Muslim’s actions to whip up hysteria, framing the events of Oct. 22 as excuses for expansion of the security state. Will Prime Minister Stephen Harper lead Canada down the same road the George W. Bush led America?
The center of Ottawa was locked down for several hours until evening, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the Canadian nation it was a terrorist act, “a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world.” [ii] Ottawa police spokesman Chuck Benoit told the media that two or three gunmen were believed to be involved in the attacks. [iii]
First news reports, citing official sources, also said that “Zehaf-Bibeau … has been on the terrorist watch list … and could be an ISIS jihadi.” [iv] A dramatic photo of him, with a long-barreled gun and semi-masked with a scarf, like an outlaw in a Hollywood Western, was also reproduced widely in the media and on the Internet. [v]
The alleged source of the photo, a Twitter account, was used to link Zehaf to another Muslim murderer, Martin Couture-Rouleau, who two days earlier had killed a Canadian soldier and injured another in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. (It was alleged that Couture-Rouleau followed the same Canadian-based pro-ISIS Twitter account.) [vi] CNN reported, from a “U.S. source,” that “Zehaf-Bibeau has ‘connections’ online with jihadists.”[vii]
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Conflicting Stories
Within 24 hours, a very different picture emerged, creating conflicting stories about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s prior knowledge of Zehaf-Bibeau that deserve a deeper investigation. The RCMP soon stated for the record that Zehaf, although a Muslim, “was not one of the 90 radicalized Canadians on an RCMP watchlist.” [viii] According to RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, Zehaf had come to Ottawa on Oct. 2 to deal with a stalled passport application:
“When the RCMP were asked to review his passport application, they found no evidence he posed a threat to national security,” Paulson said. [ix] The commissioner claimed that Zehaf wanted to go to Syria. However, a witness who had saw Zehaf in the hostel
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where he had been staying said the suspect’s travel plans were for Libya (the land of his immigrant father) and not Syria. [x]
Other records suggested that Zehaf’s actions may have been driven more by his psychology than his politics. “Three years earlier, as part of a psychiatric evaluation prior to a trial in Vancouver, Zehaf-Bibeau said “he wants to be in jail as he believes this is the only way he can overcome his addiction to crack cocaine,” according to a psychiatric assessment provided by a Canadian court.” [xi]
Unfounded ISIS Fears
The fears that Zehaf was an ISIS-linked terrorist now seem to have had little foundation. (Police have since alleged that Zehaf-Bibeau made a video of himself beforehand, saying he was motivated by his religious opposition to Canadian foreign policy. But this video has not been released to the public). [xii]
As a Canadian Muslim leader has observed: “Why can’t Muslims have insane individuals? When these actions are done by others, they say he is insane . . . Why, as a Muslim Canadian, do we always say right away it was a terrorist act?” [xiii]
The murder two days earlier of another Canadian soldier by Couture-Rouleau, who allegedly was on the 90-person watchlist, helps explain why terrorism was on the minds of Canadian authorities as well as the public. Another reason was that the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service had been conducting a war game to deal with just such an attack.
According to the CBC on October 23:
Within the last month we know that the CSIS, the RCMP and the National Security Task Force … ran a scenario that’s akin to a war games exercise if you will, where they actually imagined literally an attack in Quebec, followed by an attack in another city, followed by a tip that that ‘hey some foreign fighters are coming back from Syria.’ So they were imagining a worst case scenario. We’re seeing elements of that happening right now. … [Canadian authorities] may talk today in terms of being surprised but we know that this precise scenario has been keeping them up at night for a while.[xiv]
