Reuters/Toronto
The Canadian citizen who police contend shot dead a soldier at the nation's war memorial before charging into Parliament had intended to travel to Saudi Arabia, not Syria, his mother said in a letter to a news agency published on Saturday.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said on Thursday that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, had travelled to Ottawa from Vancouver to try to obtain a passport and intended to travel to Syria, saying that his mother, Susan Bibeau, had revealed that information in an interview.
But Bibeau told Postmedia, which publishes major Canadian newspapers, that she had said her son intended to travel to Saudi Arabia, not Syria.
"I want to correct the statement of the RCMP," wrote Bibeau, who is deputy chair of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. "I never said he wanted to go to Syria, I specifically said Saudi Arabia.
"They taped my conversation, so there can little doubt about the accuracy of what I said."
RCMP officials described Zehaf-Bibeau, whose attack ended when security officials shot him dead, as having become radicalised in recent years, a label they also applied to another man who ran over two soldiers outside Montreal with his car last Monday, killing one.
A US source described Zehaf-Bibeau as a recent convert to Islam.
An official at the Libyan embassy in Ottawa on Friday said Zehaf-Bibeau, whose father was born in Libya, had attempted unsuccessfully to secure a Libyan passport.
Bibeau said she had minimal contact with her son over the past five years, but recently met him for lunch, where he discussed his views.
"Most will call my son a terrorist," Bibeau wrote. "I don't believe he was part of an organisation or acted on behalf of some grand ideology or for a political motive. I believe he acted in despair.
"I am not sure of the meaning of being radicalised. I doubt he watched much Islamic propaganda, I doubt he wanted to go fight in Syria."
Meanwhile, Canadians returned to the reopened grounds of their parliament building on Saturday, three days after a homegrown radical rushed in armed with a rifle after killing a soldier in the second domestic attack in a week on the country’s military.
The grounds of the hilltop gothic building, whose clock tower is a centerpiece of Ottawa’s skyline, attracted scores of visitors, many still stunned by Wednesday’s attack, which took place as Prime Minister Stephen Harper was meeting with lawmakers.
