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rfmcdonaldThis morning as I was riding the subway to work, I read of one Canadian convert to Islam turned, a Nova Scotian-born Calgary resident born Damian Claremont who just died in Syria.
(Being killed in infighting in the Free Syrian Army bodes ill for the movement.)
Checking my Feedly RSS feed, I soon found that news of another, this one a man from northern Ontario who died in August.
And CBC's Nahlah Ayed has an interview with an Irish-born engineer at the Algerian gas plant that was at the focus of the u>In Amenas hostage crisis who testified that one of the three Canadians known to have been there was very enthusiastic indeed.
The one common factor in the lives of Clairmont, Poulin, and Katsiroubas seems to be that the act of conversion to Islam gave their chaotic, depressing, and often violent lives a certain amount of focus. The focus would normally be a good thing, too, if not for how their lives would be brought to an end.
I know it's terrible of me to think so, but I'm glad that they're ended. I just wish they'd not taken so many with them.
A 22-year-old Canadian-born Muslim convert who left Calgary for Syria in November 2012 has been killed by Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces during rebel infighting, CBC News has confirmed.
Mustafa al-Gharib, born in Nova Scotia as Damian Clairmont, was an Acadian who spent his first years in Wedgeport, N.S.
According to sources in Syria and Canada, al-Gharib was injured in battle and subsequently captured and killed by an unknown faction of the FSA in the city of Aleppo.
Al-Gharib was reportedly fighting with Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel group consisting of largely foreign extremists.
[. . .]
Al-Gharib converted to Islam following a two-year period of personal anguish in his teens that included him dropping out of high school, a diagnosis for bipolar disorder and a suicide attempt at age 17.
“He had some trouble as a teenager. When he converted to Islam, initially his family thought that this would be the thing that would calm him down. And eventually it did,” said CBC News senior correspondent Adrienne Arsenault, who interviewed al-Gharib’s mother last year.
“He did seem to find some peace. And then he changed.”
(Being killed in infighting in the Free Syrian Army bodes ill for the movement.)
Checking my Feedly RSS feed, I soon found that news of another, this one a man from northern Ontario who died in August.
By the time of his death in Syria, Andre Poulin from Timmins, Ont., had become a battle-hardened jihadi known as Abu Muslim.
He arrived in Syria in late 2012, and joined a unit of foreign fighters controlled by a Chechen.
He spoke freely with an American filmmaker last spring about what his family thought of what he was doing in Syria.
"Well, on the one hand, they are happy I have found my path and doing my own thing, you know, helping people, but at the same time they don't understand entirely why I am here," he said in a Channel 4 documentary.
Last August, he was part of an attack along with other Islamist groups on a government-controlled airport in the country's north.
He died in the attack, and his body was found and buried by other jihadis.
He is said to have left behind a wife and young child in Syria.
In Timmins, from 2008 to 2009, when he was barely 20 years old, the young man was already on the path toward a strict interpretation of Islam. He worried about how he was dressing and how others around him behaved. His language also started to change and harden, said CBC's Adrienne Arsenault.
He developed a separate identity, calling himself Uncle Umar. His Arabic signature read: "Martyrdom, if God wills it."
And CBC's Nahlah Ayed has an interview with an Irish-born engineer at the Algerian gas plant that was at the focus of the u>In Amenas hostage crisis who testified that one of the three Canadians known to have been there was very enthusiastic indeed.
As CBC News previously reported, the London, Ont. native acted as a negotiator and translator for the militants, who called themselves The Signatories in Blood Brigade, a group with links to al-Qaeda.
[Xristos] Katsiroubas also assisted in building bombs and appeared to handle explosives and weaponry — including a heavy machine gun — with knowledge and ease.
It has now emerged that he also helped string hostages together with explosive cord wrapped around their necks, and threatened one at gunpoint against fleeing, said Stephen McFaul, a Belfast-born electrical engineer who spent hours as one of the hostages observing and occasionally speaking to Katsiroubas.
The militant also deftly used a machine gun to try to bring down an Algerian army helicopter, says McFaul.
"The Canadian terrorist in particular, he had actually seated himself … and put the machine gun between his two feet like a tripod, and was trying to shoot up at the helicopter once it was coming in," McFaul said.
The one common factor in the lives of Clairmont, Poulin, and Katsiroubas seems to be that the act of conversion to Islam gave their chaotic, depressing, and often violent lives a certain amount of focus. The focus would normally be a good thing, too, if not for how their lives would be brought to an end.
I know it's terrible of me to think so, but I'm glad that they're ended. I just wish they'd not taken so many with them.
