MOSCOW, October 23 (RIA Novosti) – Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, suspected of killing a soldier guarding the National War Memorial in Ottawa, had mental health problems, the suspect’s friend said.
“We were having a conversation in a kitchen, and I don’t know how he worded it. He said the devil is after him … I think he must have been mentally ill,” Dave Bathurst said in the interview with Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail Wednesday.
Zehaf-Bibeau frequently talked about the presence of "shaytan," an Arab term for the devil or an evil spirit, in the world, Bathurst said.
The suspected shooter also expressed strange behavior in a mosque and was asked to stop attending prayers, according to Bathurst, who also added that Zehaf-Bibeau underwent a psychiatric assessment but was “found fit,” the newspaper reported.
Bathurst also said Zehaf-Bibeau knew Hasibullah Yusufzai, a Vancouver-area resident who was charged with travelling to Syria to join a terrorist group.
On Wednesday morning, a gunman shot dead a soldier guarding the National War Memorial in Ottawa and then proceeded to Parliament Hill's Center Block where he was killed in a shootout with a policeman.
Three people were injured as a result of the shooting in Ottawa; all of them have already been discharged from the hospital.
Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, has been named as a potential suspect in the shooting. Reportedly, he is of Algerian descent and was born in Canada.
