CBC
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?"WATCH | New Orleans attack leads to fears that ISIS is making a comeback: 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.Local SWAT teams patrol outside the Caesars Superdome ahead of the Sugar Bowl NCAA College Football Playoff game on Thursday in New Orleans. The game was postponed for 24 hours after the New Year's Day attack. (Butch Dill/The Associated Press)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."WATCH | ISIS will get 'propaganda value' from New Orleans attack, expert says: 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 patternThe 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.French forensic officers stand near a truck with a windscreen riddled with bullet holes in July 2016. The driver used it to plow through a crowd of Bastille Day revellers who'd gathered to watch fireworks in the French resort city of Nice. The driver killed 86 people. (Claude Paris/The Associated Press)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.LISTEN | After series of foiled plots, worry grows about ISIS resurgence: Unclear if attacker had direct contact with ISISAccording 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 attacksHowever, 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.WATCH | How ISIS inspires people in Western countries to commit attacks: 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."
