No evidence to suggest Ottawa shootings had Islamic State terror link

The Canadian government has so far found no evidence to link the gunman to Middle Eastern Islamist extremists.

16:14 24 October 2014

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau killed a solider at Ottawa’s war memorial before being shot dead in a nearly parliament building in events that caught international press attention earlier in the week. The victim, Cpl Nathan Cirillo, was unarmed when he was shot from behind. Now, the Canadian government has stated that there is no evidence that the shooter had links to Middle Eastern Islamist extremists.

Meanwhile, foreign minister John Baird told the BBC that the shooter was not on a list of high-risk individuals although he confirmed that he was “certainly radicalised.”

Mr Baird said he was "tremendously concerned about the number of Canadians who are radicalised and are fighting in Syria or Iraq, but we don't have any evidence to link the two at this stage".

"Reports suggest that well in excess of 100 Canadians have gone to fight jihad in the Middle East and that's a huge concern."

Talking about the shooting incident, he said: "For several minutes it was complete horror, complete terror, we didn't know whether the door was going to be kicked in, whether there was one or a group of people."

Meanwhile, Daniel Lang, chairman of the Senate national defence and security committee, told the BBC: "It was an ordeal I would not recommend anybody endure - there was just a wall's difference between where we were and where they were."