Paris attacks: RCMP investigating whether voice on ISIS recording is Canadian

The RCMP is examining whether thevoice on an audio recording attributed to ISIS and released in the wake of the Paris attacks belongs to aCanadian.

ISIS released audio statements in English and Arabic on Saturday,claiming responsibility for the co-ordinated Paris attacks Friday that claimed 129 lives.

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Const. AnnieDelisle, a spokeswoman for theRCMP, confirmed toCBC News on Wednesdaythat the policeforce is aware of mediareports about the apparentlyCanadian voice, "and are following up."

On Monday, CBC News asked threelinguisticsspecialists to analyze the recording, and all said the voice has somedistinctly Canadianspeech patterns.

Security experts and thelinguists say the voiceon the audio recording has telltaleinflections andcharacteristics of Canadian English.

"The fellow on it sounded to me like he was Canadian, and probably specifically from Ontario," Erik Thomas, alinguistics professor at the University of North Carolina,told CBC News.

Thomas, a specialist in dialect variations, has analyzed the ISIS recording and says he is 80 per cent sure the speaker is Canadian.

"There's a number of things that point toward Canada. His 'o' sounded more like 'oww,' which is typical of Canada," said Thomas. And also the word 'out'... he said like a Canadian, not 'owt.'"

Thomas said the speaker alsohad a feature known asCanadian raising in the way he pronounced words such as"vice."

The speaker in the English statement praised Allahand issued a warning to France and "all nations following its path that they will continue to be at the top of the target list for the Islamic State."

RCMPcommissioner Bob Paulson was asked about the Canadian connection at an unrelated news conference Thursday.

"[The]RCMP is trying to confirm that. It's somewhat speculative to say it's Canadian," he said.

He said Canada's spy agency, CSIS, is also working to confirm the possible link to Canada.

Agencies reviewing tapes

Amarnath Amarasingam, a Dalhousie University post-doctoral fellow who specializes in radicalization and terrorism, says the recording tweaked his ear as well.

Amarasingam, who has paid close attention to previous messages and their potential Canadian connections, says, to him, it sounds as ifthe man on the recording is speaking a neutral Canadian Englishwithout any distinct inflections or dialects characteristic of any particular ethnicity or region.

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Ray Boisvert, asecurity analyst and former assistant director of intelligence at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), says he believes numerous intelligence agencies are reviewing the tapes.

Boisvert, president of security consultancy I-Sec Integrated Strategies, said he sent the tape to a linguist who is "very adept at languages," and her first response was, with almost zero doubt, that it was a Canadian.

"It makes it very real and tangible that what the security agencies have been saying is that we have a problem of Canadian foreign fighters abroad," Boisvert said.

But he did acknowledge that this type of linguistic analysis is as much an art as a science and can't be 100 per cent certain.

SeveralCanadians have previously been linked to ISIS, as well as an al-Qaeda linkedattack on an Algerian gas plant.

Amarasingamsaidthere is nothing in the latest recording to indicate where it was made.

"There'srumours they brought cameras and audio equipment into Syria, and that's where they are producing these kinds of videos," he said."But because transferring audio files or transferring text isn't a big deal, there's nothing to say these guys can't still be based in the West and doing what they are doing."

Authoritiesin France, meanwhile, haveanalyzeda separate recording in French that claimed responsibility for the attacks, and believe they have identified the voice as belonging toFabienClain,a convictedextremist suspected of being based in Syria.