An investigation which progressed in a few hours. The day after the car-ramming attack in New Orleans (United States) during New Year’s Eve, the American authorities held a new press conference this Thursday, January 2, on the circumstances of this killing. Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old former soldier, was identified earlier as its author.
In the midst of celebrating New Year’s Eve, this man drove his pickup truck into a crowded area of the city’s French Quarter, before being shot and killed by law enforcement. In total, the killing left at least 14 dead and around thirty injured, according to a latest report. More details were therefore provided regarding the profile of the killer, as well as his possible complicity.
A suspect who acted alone, according to the FBI
Part of the investigations carried out by the American security services consisted of establishing whether Shamsud-Din Jabbar had acted alone or not to commit this mass crime. The authorities initially communicated on Wednesday that they did not believe that Jabbar “was solely responsible” for the attack. According to the latest elements of the investigation, this position finally seems to have been reversed.
“We do not believe at this stage that any other people were involved in this attack, with the exception of Shamsud-Din Jabbar”, the deceased suspect, declared Christopher Raia, a senior FBI official, during the press conference this Thursday. The latter also reaffirmed the “terrorist” nature of the attack. “It was a premeditated and evil act,” he said. According to the latter, referring to information gathered from the city’s video surveillance images, the killer himself planted two homemade bombs in the neighborhood before charging into the crowd.
Allegiance to ISIS confirmed
The official, who insisted on the fact that the investigation was only in its early stages and that certain gray areas still remained to be clarified, also provided new elements on the journey of Shamsud-Din Jabbar. This former member of the American army, sent to Afghanistan between 2009 and 2010, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State “last summer”, according to Christopher Raia. A Daesh flag was found in the killer’s vehicle after the attack, although the terrorist organization has not yet claimed responsibility.
“Investigators believe the suspect rented the vehicle used on December 30 in Texas. The next day, he posted five videos on his Facebook account to support ISIS,” detailed the special agent. Father of three children and divorced twice, the author of the killing would have first indicated in these extracts that he wanted to attack his family and his friends. But “he was worried that the newspaper headlines would not focus on, I quote: ‘The war between the faithful and the infidels,'” Christopher Raia said.
No ‘irrefutable link’ with Las Vegas explosion
On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden indicated that the police were also trying to understand whether there was “a connection” between the attack in New Orleans and the explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck trapped outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas . This explosion left one dead and seven lightly injured. “At this stage, there is no irrefutable link between the attack in New Orleans and that in Las Vegas,” Christopher Raia underlined this Thursday. Both killings are respectively the subject of FBI investigations.
These two attacks occur in an extremely tense political climate in the United States. The American president-elect, Donald Trump, castigated his predecessor Joe Biden as “the worst president in history”, calling into question his policy of open borders “responsible according to him for this kind of drama. “I told several times that radical Islamic terrorism and other forms of violent crime would become so serious in America that it would become difficult to imagine or believe them. This moment has arrived, but worse than ever,” said the billionaire on his Truth Social network.