CBC News has learned that two Canadians linked to al-Qaeda and killed while staging a bloody attack on an Algerian gas refinery earlier this year were former high school friends in their early 20s, one from a Greek Orthodox family, and both from a comfortable middle-class London, Ontario, neighbourhood.
A special CBC News investigation has confirmed the two al-Qaeda linked militants are Xristos Katsiroubas and Ali Medlej, both believed to be under 24 years old.
Xris Katsiroubas, one of two Canadians killed while staging an attack on an Algerian gas refinery earlier this year, grew up in a home with a backyard swimming pool in a middle-class London neighbourhood with rich ethnic diversity. (CBC)
The attack by the two Canadians and 30 other militants linked to al-Qaeda left more than three dozen refinery workers dead, the final 10 of whom were reportedly tied to gas plant piping and killed in a massive bomb blast.
Sources say it is likely Katsiroubas and Medlej intentionally blew themselves up in the blast; one of them could be only identified by DNA testing.
No one will ever know all the details of how and why two teenagers who seemed rather normal ended up committing such monstrous acts.
But the details that are emerging from former friends and associates suggest theirs is a story that is becoming frighteningly more common.
“Xris” Katsiroubas grew up in a home with a backyard swimming pool in a middle-class London neighbourhood with rich ethnic diversity.
He lived with his mother after his parents divorced, and by all accounts seemed normal.
One former friend recalls that in the early years, at least, “he was like all the other kids, very smart in school, quite active.”
Katsiroubas appears to have had an older brother, and at least three large families of cousins.
One relative is quoted in a 2007 news article saying he travelled all the way across London to shop at his favorite Greek pastry shop.
A former friend says that at some point in those teenage years, Katsiroubas converted to Islam. (Full story CBC News)
