A deadly vehicle attack in New Orleans by a man the FBI says was “100 percent inspired by ISIS” has raised questions about the extent of his ties to the militant group and adherence to its ideology.
The FBI said it recovered a flag representing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) from the rental vehicle a man used to plow into New Year’s Eve crowds, killing 14 people. They said he also posted videos on his Facebook account professing his allegiance to the militant group.
“To go so far, to get an ISIS flag, to put this up [ISIS related] videos, I have a feeling that he was actually absorbing ISIS propaganda,” said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consulting firm.
Clarke says the attacker may also have been going through financial or marital difficulties that could have created cognitive openings for him to become vulnerable to ISIS ideology.
“And then, at what point is it more about ideology than personal complaints?“
A deadly truck attack in New Orleans blamed on a former US soldier turned ISIS radical is raising fears that the group could re-emerge as a major threat. Police in Canada, the US and around the world have thwarted several ISIS-linked plots to kill civilians in recent months.
Investigators are looking into any support or inspiration he may have drawn from ISIS. But the incident was similar to past ISIS-inspired attacks in which individuals drove vehicles into crowds.
“When this first happened, without knowing anything about the person responsible… my first thought was that there had been a series of similar attacks in 2016 and 2017 that had varying degrees of inspiration or links to ISIS” , said Tom Joscelynsenior contributor at Just Security, an online security analysis forum that he is a part of Reiss Center in Law and Security from New York University School of Law.
Although the FBI initially said it was looking for any accomplices the gunman may have had, they said Thursday they believe Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old American citizen from Texas, is the only person responsible.
Jabbar posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack, the FBI said, including one in which he said he had joined ISIS earlier this summer.
The agency also said that Jabbar originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned that news headlines did not focus on a “war between believers and non-believers.”
Colin Clarke, director of research at The Soufan Group, says the lethality and complexity of the New Orleans vehicle attack 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 “domestic violent extremist.”
He says that definition includes people who may not be legitimate members of a terrorist organization, but who might support them or be inspired by their ideology.
In the case of the attack in New Orleans, Doctor says that the police are convinced that the attacker was inspired by the Islamic State and that he carried out the attack believing that he supported the group, its mission and goal.
“What I think is not yet clear from the information that is currently available is exactly when Jabbar was radicalized to the ideology of the Islamic State,” he said.
The vehicle attack follows the ISIS pattern
The New Orleans attackers’ method of using vehicles fits a similar pattern in past ISIS-related incidents in which individuals used cars or trucks to kill as many people as possible.
Analysts note that ISIS has encouraged its followers to use vehicles as weapons, inspiring a series of attacks in a number of cities including Berlin, London, New York and Barcelona, between 2016 and 2017.
One of the deadliest attacks occurred on July 14, 2016, when 86 people were killed by a man who drove a truck at high speed into crowds gathered to watch Bastille Day fireworks in the French Riviera city of Nice.
Two days later, claimed ISIS the attacker, a 31-year-old Tunisian named Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was one of his “soldiers”.
Analysts like Nathan Sales, the former US State Department counterterrorism coordinator, say attacks like these are an indication that joining ISIS doesn’t always mean going abroad to fight, something the militant group uses to its recruiting advantage.
“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 at home. Continue the jihad, carry out acts of violence at home,'” he told CBC News Network.
Front burner24:07Why is ISIS experiencing a revival?
It is not clear whether the attacker had direct contact with ISIS
According to NCITE, the number of ISIS supporters in the US is statistically small. But over the past decade, the FBI has consistently said in public statements that it has more than 1,000 active ISIS investigations in all 50 states.
Typically, there will be about a dozen ISIS-related federal arrests in America a year, wrote Seamus Hughes, a senior research fellow at the college and a policy fellow at NCITE. But from 2014 to 2016, at the height of ISIS, he noted, there were more than 60 arrests a year.
It is not yet clear what, if any, direct contact the New Orleans attacker may have had with ISIS. But Just Security’s Joscelyn noted that there doesn’t need to be a physical connection for a person to be inspired by ISIS.
“He may not have been in contact with anybody,” Joscelyn said, noting that the New Orleans attack may have been “inspired by ISIS calls to do things like that.”
Online recruiters encourage attacks
However, in some past cases, the person responsible was in contact with a so-called ISIS virtual planner, Joscelyn said.
“ISIS had these guys who were basically online recruiters who were in contact with aspiring recruits and potential jihadists, and inciting them to commit acts of terrorism in their homeland,” he said.
Nathan Sales, former US State Department counterterrorism coordinator, talks about the New Orleans attack, its ties to ISIS, and how the group still inspires people in Western countries to carry out attacks.
Sales says the attack is a wake-up call about the threat ISIS still poses in the country.
He says that during the rise of ISIS a decade ago, thousands of Westerners from North America, South America and Europe traveled to Syria to fight for ISIS.
“We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking it’s all ancient history. It’s not,” he said. “ISIS is still targeting our youth online. They’re still radicalizing, they’re still recruiting. And we have to stay on top of that.”
