The gunman shot dead by police in Canada’s parliament building after going on a fatal shooting spree was a Muslim convert who appears to have had an extensive criminal record.
Born in Quebec on 16 October 1982 as Michael Joseph Hall, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau grew up in Laval, just north of Montreal, and is said to have attended private schools.
The Canadian news channel CTV News named his mother as Susan Bibeau, the deputy chair of the immigration committee at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. CTV also reported that his stepfather, or adoptive father, is a Libyan businessman, Bulgasem Zehaf, who once owned a cafe called Café Tripoli and appears to have fought in Libya in 2011, according to the Globe and Mail . The couple divorced in 1999.
A source confirmed to CTV News that the government had recently seized Zehaf-Bibeau’s passport, having labelled him a “high-risk traveller”.
Court documents show that a man with the same name, who appears to be Zehaf-Bibeau, had an extensive criminal record for petty crimes in Quebec and Vancouver in the early 2000s. Twelve of the 13 cases brought against him in Quebec resulted in convictions. Four of them were for drugs possession – three for marijuana and one for PCP, for which he received 60 days in prison.
He was convicted of assault causing bodily harm in 2001 and received a suspended sentence and a fine. His longest sentence was for robbery, possession of break-in tools, theft and conspiracy in 2003, for which he was sentenced to two years in jail and three years’ probation.
Court records suggest that a psychiatrist found him fit to stand trial but a friend and fellow Muslim convert, Dave Bathurst, told the Globe and Mail that he suspected Zehaf-Bibeau was mentally ill. “We were having a conversation in a kitchen, and I don’t know how he worded it: He said the devil is after him.”
Bathurst told the paper that Zehaf-Bibeau had plans to travel to the Middle East, but had stressed that he only wanted to go to learn about Islam and study Arabic.
