Five days later a pickup truck blows up ISIS flag driven into crowd celebrating New Year's Eve in New OrleansInvestigators say they are learning more about the background and possible motives of the driver who carried out the fatal attack.
Following leads that surfaced in several United States cities outside Louisiana, federal agents are also investigating a series of trips by the driver to New Orleans and Cairo, Egypt in 2023, said Special Agent in Charge Lionel Myrthill. The FBI at a briefing in New Orleans, Sunday.
The FBI previously identified the perpetrator as a 42-year-old man Shamsuddin JabbarAn American citizen of Texas. He was shot by police during a disturbance on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, killing 14 and wounding dozens of others. Authorities have described the attack as an act of terrorism, pointing to social media videos where Jabbar has associated himself with ISIS, and believe he was likely radicalized online.
Federal agents have found no evidence of any accomplices in the attack and reiterated Sunday that it appears Jabbar acted alone. ISIS has not claimed responsibility for the attack and U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said there are no established links to foreign actors, but investigators are examining possible connections between Jabbar's previous travels and what happened in the French Quarter last week. Are.
“Our agents are getting answers about where he went, who he met with and how those travels may or may not be connected to his actions in our city of New Orleans,” Myrthill told reporters.
The agent said Jabbar traveled to Cairo from June 22 to July 3, 2023, and to Ontario, Canada from July 10 to July 13 of the same year.
According to Myrthill, Jabbar visited New Orleans at least twice in the months before the attack, in October and November last year. The FBI on Sunday shared video footage that Jabbar recorded using meta glasses During one of those trips, he was shown riding through the French Quarter on a bicycle.
Myrthill said he was wearing glasses when he entered the crowd on Bourbon Street, but the recording feature was not on.
Investigators are conducting interviews with hundreds of people they have identified about “key aspects of this complex, evolving case,” Myrthill said. They are following leads in Houston, Texas, where Jabbar lived, as well as Atlanta, Georgia and Tampa, Florida. Although the FBI believes Jabbar was the sole attacker on New Year's Eve, the agency said it is continuing to investigate “potential associates” in the US and abroad.
The FBI did not provide details Sunday about who those potential accomplices might be. But Joshua Jackson, special agent in charge of the New Orleans Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said the investigation has identified a man who sold Jabbar the rifle found in his possession after the attack in an illegal private sale . in Texas.
Christopher Raya, deputy assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, said Sunday that domestic and international terrorism threats against the United States remain “elevated” at this time. Raya said that “Lone actors, or small groups of individuals who are typically radicalized to violence online and who primarily use easily accessible weapons, pose the greatest terrorism threat to our homeland Is.”
Representative Jim Himes, a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, echoed Raia's comments on the difficulty authorities face in dealing with lone actors during an interview on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
“The people and assets we have deployed against this threat are the best in the world,” Himes said. “It is also true that lone wolf attackers, that is, an individual who is not communicating with anyone abroad, who is not texting or sending emails, are exceptionally difficult to detect.”
Himes appeared on “Face the Nation” with House Intelligence Chairman Representative Mike Turner, who discussed the Bourbon Street attack from a national security perspective.
,“There may have been opportunities or times when he could have been found and stopped,” Turner said, referencing Jabbar's prior trips to New Orleans. We would learn what they are, and in what ways they might be found, and perhaps we could intervene. But they will give us great opportunities on which to look to see how we might be able to find others in the future.”