Shamsud-Din Jabbar, US Army veteran, drove into a New Year’s crowd and planted bombs, pledging allegiance to ISIS, FBI reveals.
The FBI has confirmed that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the US Army veteran who rammed a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, acted alone and had joined the ISIS terror group. In a statement released on Thursday, the FBI disclosed that Jabbar, a US citizen from Texas, posted five videos on his Facebook account hours before the attack, in which he expressed allegiance to ISIS and his intent to carry out the attack.
The FBI further revealed that Jabbar planted two homemade bombs at the scene of the attack. “We do not assess at this point that anyone else is involved in this attack except for Shamsud-Din Jabbar,” said Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division. “This was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act.”
The deadly truck-ramming attack killed 15 people and injured dozens when Jabbar drove his vehicle through a crowd of pedestrians in New Orleans’ French Quarter on New Year’s Day. Authorities also discovered an ISIS black flag in the truck, and President Joe Biden was briefed on the videos Jabbar posted prior to the attack, which showed his allegiance to the militant group and his intent to kill.
While the FBI confirmed Jabbar’s connection to ISIS, they stated that there is no evidence linking the New Orleans attack to a vehicle explosion outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas.
Jabbar, who enlisted in the US Army in 2007, served in Afghanistan before transferring to the Army Reserve and leaving the military in 2020 with the rank of staff sergeant.
