Ottawa - A Muslim convert who stormed Canada's parliament last October before being shot dead said he carried out the attack in retaliation for the West's military deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a video released on Friday.
Michael Zehal-Bibeau, who killed a ceremonial guard at Ottawa's war memorial before bursting into parliament, made the video message on a phone found in his abandoned car.
"This is in retaliation for Afghanistan and because (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper wants to send his troops to Iraq," Zehaf-Bibeau says in the grainy video released by police.
"Canada's officially become one of our enemies by fighting and bombing us and creating a lot of terror in our countries and killing us and killing our innocents," added the 32-year-old.
"We'll not cease until you guys decide to be a peaceful country and stay to your own and stop going to other countries and stop occupying and killing the righteous of us who are trying to bring back religious law in our countries."
Zehaf-Bibeau, a petty criminal who later converted to Islam, was shot dead by the Canadian parliament's Sergeant at Arms.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Bob Paulson told a parliamentary committee the federal police edited out 18 seconds of the video before releasing it -- 13 at beginning and five at the end -- but did not explain what had been cut.
The committee is examining a proposed new anti-terror law written in response to Zehaf-Bibeau's attack and another on a Canadian soldier in rural Quebec the same week, and provides sweeping new powers to Canada's spy agency.
Canada ended its 10-year military mission in Afghanistan last year. In November its war planes joined US-led airstrikes on Islamic State jihadists in Iraq.
AFP
