A deadly car attack in New Orleans by a man the FBI said was “100% inspired by ISIS” has raised questions about the extent of his ties to the militant group and commitment to its ideology.
The FBI said it recovered a flag representing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) from a rented vehicle that a man drove into a New Year's Eve crowd, killing 14 people. They said he also posted videos on his Facebook account professing his loyalty to the militant group.
“By going so far as to capture the ISIS flag and post these (ISIS-related) videos, I feel like he was actually absorbing ISIS propaganda,” Colin P. Clarke, counterterrorism analyst at Soufan Group, told the New York Times York based security consultancy.
Clarke says the attacker may also have been struggling with financial or marital difficulties, which could have opened up his cognitive abilities and made him susceptible to ISIS ideology.
“And at what point is it more about ideology than personal grievances?“
A deadly truck attack in New Orleans blamed on a former US soldier turned ISIS radical is increasing fears that the group could re-emerge as a major threat. In recent months, police in Canada, the U.S. and around the world have thwarted several ISIS-linked plots to kill civilians.
Investigators are looking into what support or inspiration he may have drawn from ISIS. However, the incident was similar to previous ISIS-inspired attacks in which people drove vehicles into crowds.
“When this case first occurred, without knowing anything about who was responsible… the first thing I thought was the wave of similar attacks in 2016 and 2017 that had varying degrees of inspiration or connection to ISIS,” Tom Joscelyn saidsenior staff member at Just Security, an online security analysis forum that is part of Reiss Center law and security at the New York University School of Law.
Although the FBI initially said it was looking for the attacker's accomplices, on Thursday it said it believed the sole person responsible for the attack was Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S.-born Texas citizen.
The FBI says Jabbar posted five videos to his Facebook account in the hours before the attack, including one in which he claims he joined ISIS before this summer.
The agency also reported that Jabbar originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned that news headlines would not focus on the “war between believers and unbelievers.”
Colin Clarke, director of research at The Soufan Group, says the lethality and complexity of the vehicle ramming attack in New Orleans will be used in ISIS propaganda to radicalize others.
The attacker fits the definition of a “domestic violent extremist”
Austin Doctor, director of counterterrorism research initiatives at the National Center for Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education (NCITE), says Jabbar fits law enforcement's definition of a “homegrown violent extremist.”
He says this definition includes people who are not necessarily legitimate members of a terrorist organization but may provide them with support or be inspired by their ideology.
Doc says that in the case of the New Orleans attack, law enforcement appears certain that the attacker was specifically inspired by the Islamic State and carried out the attack believing he was supporting the group, its mission and its cause.
“From the information currently available, in my opinion it is not yet clear when exactly Jabbar was radicalized to the ideology of the Islamic State,” he said.
ISIS-style vehicle attack
The New Orleans attacker's use of the vehicle follows a similar pattern to past ISIS-related incidents in which individuals used cars or trucks to kill as many people as possible.
Analysts note that ISIS urged its supporters to use vehicles as weapons, which inspired a series of attacks in multiple cities, including Berlin, London, New York and Barcelona, in 2016–2017.
One of the deadliest attacks occurred on July 14, 2016, when 86 people were killed when a man drove a truck at high speed into a crowd gathered to watch Bastille Day fireworks in Nice on the French Riviera.
Two days later ISIS claimed the attacker, a 31-year-old Tunisian named Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was one of its “soldiers”.
Analysts such as Nathan Sales, former counterterrorism coordinator at the U.S. Department of State, say attacks like these show that joining ISIS doesn't always mean going abroad to fight, something the militant group uses to its advantage in recruiting.
“They said, 'We understand that you want to come to Syria and Iraq to fight in the desert and create a caliphate. But you are also valuable in your own country. Continue jihad, carry out acts of violence at home,'” he said. CBC News Network.
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It is unclear whether the attacker had direct contact with ISIS
According to NCITE, the number of ISIS supporters in the US is statistically small. However, over the past decade, the FBI has consistently said in public comments that it has more than 1,000 active ISIS investigations in all 50 states.
Typically, there are about a dozen ISIS-related federal arrests a year in America, wrote Seamus Hughes, senior research fellow and policy associate at NCITE. But from 2014 to 2016, at the height of ISIS, he noted there were more than 60 arrests a year.
So far, it is unclear whether the attacker in New Orleans had direct contact with ISIS, if any. However, Joscelyn from Just Security noted that there does not have to be a physical connection for someone to be inspired by ISIS.
“He may not have had contact with anyone,” Joscelyn said, noting that the New Orleans attack may have been “inspired by ISIS calls for this type of action.”
Online recruiters encourage attacks
However, in some previous cases, the person in charge contacted a so-called ISIS virtual planner, Joscelyn said.
“ISIS had people who were essentially recruiting online, who were contacting aspiring recruits and potential jihadists and encouraging them to commit acts of terrorism in their own country,” he said.
Nathan Sales, former counterterrorism coordinator at the U.S. Department of State, discusses the New Orleans attack, its connection to ISIS, and how the group continues to inspire people in Western countries to strike.
Sales says the attack is a wake-up call for the threat ISIS continues to pose in the country.
He says that ten years ago during the rise of ISIS, thousands of Westerners from North America, South America and Europe came to Syria to fight for ISIS.
“We should not make the mistake of thinking that this is all ancient history. That's not the case,” he said. “ISIS continues to attack our youth online. He's still radicalizing, still recruiting. We have to control it.”