OTTAWA, Ontario — He was a recent convert to Islam and a petty criminal with a long rap sheet, including a string of drug offenses.

In recent weeks, he had been staying in a homeless shelter, where he talked about wanting to go to Libya to get away from drugs but griped that he couldn’t get a passport.

A picture began to emerge Thursday of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau a day after the 32-year-old Canadian launched a deadly attack on Canada’s seat of government that forced the country — again — to confront the danger of radicalized citizens in its midst.

In what the prime minister called a terrorist attack, Bibeau shot a soldier to death at Canada’s tomb of the unknown Wednesday, then stormed the Parliament building, where he was gunned down by the sergeant-at-arms.

Abubakir Abdelkareem, 29, who often visited the Ottawa Mission, a homeless shelter downtown, said he met Zehaf-Bibeau there. He said Zehaf-Bibeau told him he had a drug problem in Vancouver but had been clean for three months.

Abdelkareem said that Zehaf-Bibeau wanted his passport to fly to Libya because he thought he could avoid drugs there. “As soon as I get it, I’m going to fly. ... Then there’s no temptation,” Abdelkareem quoted him as saying.

But in the past three days, “his personality changed completely,” Abdelkareem said. “He was not talkative; he was not social” anymore and slept during the day, said Abdelkareem, who concluded the man was back on drugs.

Lloyd Maxwell, another shelter resident, said that Zehaf-Bibeau had lived for some time in Vancouver, then Calgary, then came to Ottawa specifically to try to get a passport, believing that would be more easily accomplished in the nation’s capital.

“He didn’t get it, and that made him very agitated,” Maxwell said. Maxwell said that he suggested to the man that he might be on a no-fly list, and “he kind of looked at me funny, and he walked away.”

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police confirmed Thursday that Zehaf-Bibeau had applied recently for a passport, but said it believes he intended to go to Syria.