A Canadian whose remains were found at the site of a gas plant siege in Algeria is among the suspected terrorists who co-ordinated the attack.
The RCMP said Monday that a Canadian was among those killed when al Qaeda-linked militants stormed the plant in January.
They refused to reveal the man’s identity or the nature of his involvement in the hostage-taking, citing an ongoing investigation.
But CTV News has learned that the dead man had a criminal record and lived in Toronto. He was not carrying a Canadian passport or any other form of documentation, and his body was identified through his fingerprints.
Senior officials say RCMP investigators have collected DNA from another badly burned body found at the site of the attack. They haven’t yet been able to confirm if those are the remains of another Canadian.
Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal has claimed that the group of militants who ambushed workers at the gas plant included two Canadian citizens.The Canadian government, however, has been saying that it was having difficulty determining whether that’s true.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has expressed frustration about the lack of information coming from Algeria and summoned the country’s ambassador to Canada to explain why Sellal believed Canadians were involved in the bloody hostage-taking.
RCMP investigators were also sent to Algeria to determine whether the purported Canadian militants carried authentic or fake passports and documentation.
Sellal said other militants involved in the gas-plant siege came from Egypt, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Tunisia.
At least 38 hostages and 29 militants were killed in the attack.
The man who claimed responsibility, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, was reportedly killed earlier this month in a military strike in northern Mali.
With files from CTV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife
