Justin Ling, a freelance journalist who was in the Canadian Parliament when a shooting occurred, told MSNBC that the attack were “obviously inspired” by a radical ideology, and noted specifically that ISIS had threatened an attack on Canada.
Ling noted that people were making the assumption that the Ottawa shootings were connected to the Monday killing of a Canadian soldier by a man confirmed to be an ISIS sympathizer.
LING: I think we are all operating on the assumption. There was reports, obviously unconfirmed reports, that one of the gunmen was wearing an Arabic style scarf, a kaffiyeh. Given the coordinated nature of the attack it seems to be obviously inspired by radical ideology. I think it’s obviously whether or not they were coordinated with the attacks on Monday, it was obviously inspired by it. I know, for a fact the security intelligence agency had been monitoring up to 90 individuals they believed were radicalized and capable of carrying out attacks. They told us that the man from Monday was one of those 90, I think it’s clear that however many there were today were on there too.
MSNBC HOST TAMRON HALL: At this point, authorities have not confirmed that information. These individuals are linked to radicalized Islam, that hasn’t been confirmed. Given the events that played out earlier in the week, that’s one of the first questions to be asked regarding motive. At this time we haven’t been able to confirm any of that information.
LING: We haven’t, but we’ve been told there was repeated warnings from ISIS and ISIS members over the past weeks that the attack on Canada was imminent and they would be targeting uniformed personnel and that the attack would happen today.
HALL: The reports you just mentioned from early October. At the time authorities described these threats as aspirational or being in the aspirational stage. But we know that NBC news and Canadian authorities had been discussing the potential that ISIS wanted to carry out knife and gun attacks against U.S. and Canadian targets inside Canada. That being reported at the beginning of October. But authorities at the time stressed that the possible attacks were at the aspirational stage.