How ISIS may have inspired the deadly truck attack in New Orleans
The deadly vehicle attack in New Orleans launched by a man the FBI claims was “100 per cent inspired by ISIS” has sparked questions about the extent of his affiliation with the militant group and adherence to its ideology.
The FBI has said they recovered a flag representing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) from the rental vehicle the man used to ram into the New Year’s Day crowd, killing 14 people. They said he had also posted videos to his Facebook account professing his allegiance to the militant group.
“To go to such lengths, to get an ISIS flag, to post these [ISIS related] videos, my sense is that he was actually imbibing 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 the ISIS ideology.
“And then, at what point is it more about the ideology than the personal grievances?“
The deadly New Orleans truck attack blamed on a former U.S. soldier-turned-ISIS radical is heightening fears the group could be reemerging as a major threat. Police in Canada, the U.S., and around the world have foiled several ISIS-affiliated plots to kill civilians in recent months.
Investigators are looking into any support or inspiration he may have drawn from ISIS. But the incident bore similarities to past ISIS-inspired attacks where individuals used vehicles to plow into crowds.
“When this first went down, without knowing anything about the person responsible … the first thing I thought of was there was a spate of similar attacks in 2016 and 2017 that had various degrees of ISIS inspiration or connection,” said Tom Joscelyn, a senior fellow at Just Security, an online security analysis forum that’s part of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at the New York University’s School of Law.
Though the FBI initially said they were seeking any accomplices the attacker may have had, on Thursday, they said they believed that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S.-born citizen from Texas, was the sole person responsible.
Jabbar had posted five videos to his Facebook account in the hours before the attack, the FBI said, including one in which he said he had joined ISIS before this summer.
The agency also said Jabbar had originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned that news headlines would not focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers.”
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.
Attacker fits definition of ‘homegrown violent extremist’
Austin Doctor, the director of counterterrorism research initiatives at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE), says Jabbar fits law enforcement’s definition of a “homegrown violent extremist.”
He says that definition includes people who may not be card-carrying members of a terrorist organization, but who might provide support to them or take inspiration from their ideology.
In the case of the New Orleans attack, Doctor says law enforcement seems confident that the attacker was inspired specifically by the Islamic State and conducted the attack believing it to be in support of the group, its mission and its cause.
“What I think is not clear yet from the information that’s currently available is exactly when Jabbar was radicalized to the Islamic State’s ideology,” he said.
Vehicle attack follows ISIS pattern
The New Orleans attacker’s method of using a vehicle does fit a similar pattern of past ISIS-related incidents where individuals have used cars or trucks to kill as many people as possible.
Analysts note that ISIS has called on its followers to use vehicles as weapons, which inspired 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 cargo truck at high speed into a crowd gathered to watch Bastille Day fireworks in the French Riviera city of Nice.
Two days later, ISIS claimed the attacker, a 31-year-old Tunisian man named Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was one of its “soldiers.”
Analysts like Nathan Sales, a former counterterrorism co-ordinator for the U.S. State Department, say attacks like these are an indication that joining ISIS doesn’t always mean going overseas to fight, something the militant group uses to its advantage when recruiting.
“They said ‘We understand you want to come to Syria and Iraq to fight in the desert and create the caliphate. But you’re valuable at home as well. Carry on jihad, carry out acts of violence at home,’ ” he told CBC News Network.
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Unclear if attacker had direct contact with ISIS
According to NCITE, the number of ISIS supporters in the U.S. is statistically small. But over the last decade, the FBI has consistently said in public remarks that it has more than 1,000 active ISIS investigations in all 50 states.
Typically, in America, there will be about a dozen ISIS-related federal arrests a year, wrote Seamus Hughes, a senior research faculty and policy associate with NCITE. But from 2014 to 2016, at the height of ISIS, he noted that there were more than 60 arrests a year.
So far, it’s unclear what, if any, direct contact the attacker in New Orleans may have had with ISIS. But Joscelyn with Just Security noted 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 the New Orleans attack may have been “inspired by the calls of ISIS to do this kind of thing.”
Online recruiters encourage attacks
However, in some past cases, the person responsible has been in touch with a so-called virtual planner of ISIS, Joscelyn said.
“ISIS had these guys who were basically online recruiters who were in contact with aspiring recruits and would-be jihadists, and encourage them to do acts of terrorism in their own home country,” he said.
Nathan Sales, former counterterrorism co-ordinator for the U.S. State Department, discusses the New Orleans attack, its connections to ISIS and how the group is still inspiring people in Western countries to strike.
Sales says the attack is a wake-up call about the threat ISIS still poses domestically.
He says that during the rise of ISIS a decade ago, thousands of Westerners from North America, South America and Europe travelled into Syria to fight for ISIS.
“We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that’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 need to stay on top of this.”
Published at Wed, 01 Jan 2025 13:41:41 +0000
Man found dead in Cybertruck explosion outside Trump hotel in Vegas was shot, sheriff says
The highly decorated army soldier inside the Tesla Cybertruck that burst into flames outside U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel shot himself in the head before the explosion, officials said Thursday.
They said he likely planned to cause more damage, but the explosive was rudimentary and the steel-sided vehicle absorbed much of the force.
Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference that a handgun was found at the feet of the man, who officials believe is Matthew Livelsberger. Officials believe the shot was self-inflicted.
Damage from the blast was mostly limited to the interior of the truck. The blast “vented out and up” and didn’t hit the Trump hotel doors just a few metres away, the sheriff said.
“The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience,” said Kenny Cooper, a special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Among other charred items found inside the truck were a second firearm, a number of fireworks, passport, military ID, credit cards, an iPhone and a smartwatch, McMahill said.
Authorities said both guns were purchased legally. Investigators have not definitively identified the remains as Livelsberger, but the IDs and tattoos on the body “give a strong indication that it’s him,” the sheriff said.
Livelsberger served in the Green Berets, highly trained special forces who work to counter terrorism abroad and train partners, the army said in a statement. He had served in the army since 2006, rising through the ranks with a long career of overseas assignments, deploying twice to Afghanistan and serving in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia and Congo, the army said.
He was awarded two Bronze Stars, including one with a valour device for courage under fire, a combat infantry badge and an army commendation medal with valour. Livelsberger was on approved leave when he died, according to the statement.
The FBI said Thursday in a post on X that it was “conducting law enforcement activity” at a home in Colorado Springs, Colo., related to Wednesday’s explosion but provided no other details.
The explosion of the truck, packed with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters, came hours after Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans’s famed French Quarter early on New Year’s Day, killing at least 14 people before being shot to death by police. That crash was being investigated as a terrorist attack.
The FBI said Thursday that they believe Jabbar acted alone, reversing its position from a day earlier that he likely worked with others.
Both Livelsberger and Jabbar spent time at the base formerly known as Fort Bragg, a massive Army base in North Carolina that is home to multiple army special operations units.
However, one of the officials who spoke to The Associated Press said there is no overlap in their assignments at the base, now called Fort Liberty.
FBI deputy assistant director Christopher Raia said Thursday that officials have found “no definitive link” between the New Orleans attack and the truck explosion in Las Vegas.
The motivation behind Wednesday’s Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas is currently unknown, authorities said at a news conference as they acknowledged ‘it’s not lost on us that it’s in front of the Trump building, that it’s a Tesla vehicle.’ They also addressed speculation about possible links between the active-duty soldier whose remains they believe were found inside the vehicle and the army veteran who rammed a truck into a crowd in New Orleans just hours earlier.
Seven people nearby suffered minor injuries when the Tesla truck exploded. Video showed a tumble of charred fireworks mortars, canisters and other explosive devices crowded into the back of the pickup. The truck bed walls were still intact because the blast shot straight up rather than to the sides.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday afternoon on X that “we have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself.”
“All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion,” Musk wrote.
Musk has recently become a member of Trump’s inner circle. Neither Trump nor Musk was in Las Vegas early Wednesday. Both had attended Trump’s New Year’s Eve party at his South Florida estate.
Authorities know who rented the truck with the Turo app in Colorado, said McMahill, the elected sheriff of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, on Wednesday. He did not release the person’s ID, however.
Published at Thu, 02 Jan 2025 18:55:39 +0000
