Early in the morning on New Year’s Day 2025, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, an Army veteran, plowed his truck into a crowd of merrymakers, murdering 14 people and injuring another 57. In numerous establishment media reports, Jabbar was portrayed as a good man who snapped under the pressure of various setbacks. His family expressed shock and puzzlement that Jabbar, whom they said was a calm, even-tempered fellow, would be capable of doing such a thing. Yet a recent arrest half a world away has cast Jabbar’s attack in a vastly different light.
In the immediate aftermath of Jabbar’s attack, the media consensus was that Shamsud-Din Jabbar was an ordinary guy whom a downturn in fortunes had driven around the bend. In a video he posted on YouTube years before his attack, Jabbar spoke about how his stint in the army taught him responsibility: “I learned the meaning of great service and what it means to be responsive and taking everything seriously, dotting I’s and crossing T’s to make sure things go off without a hitch.” His brother, Abdur Jabbar, asserted that “he was very well-tempered, slow to anger. That’s why it was so unbelievable that he would be capable of something like this.”
Unbelievable, but not inexplicable: NBC News reported on Jan. 4 that unnamed “experts” had determined that Jabbar’s was a fairly ordinary case: they said that “the details that have emerged about Jabbar align with the typical pattern of how a veteran can be radicalized to violence.”
These “experts” said that it all came down to Jabbar’s personal setbacks and financial troubles: “In the years leading up to Wednesday’s attack, Jabbar experienced his third divorce, accumulated significant debt and lost his corporate job. Divorce court records from January 2022 reveal he was facing business losses and credit card debt in the tens of thousands of dollars, along with more than $27,000 in overdue mortgage payments. By August of that year, his bank accounts held just $2,012, according to filings in the case.”
Yet there were indications that Jabbar hadn’t simply been driving down the street in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day when he had some kind of psychotic break. Instead, his attack appeared to have been carefully planned. It came to light that he had visited New Orleans twice before his attack (Jabbar lived in Houston) and wore Meta glasses to record video in the French Quarter.
And as early as Jan. 2, the day after the attack, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia said that Jabbar was "100% inspired by ISIS," that is, the Islamic State, which has called more than once for their friends and allies in Western countries to mount vehicular jihad attacks. Jabbar had even added a note on Facebook declaring his support for ISIS not long before he carried out his attack. Raia also said, however, that “the FBI believes Jabbar acted alone to execute a premeditated ‘act of terrorism.’"
A “premeditated act of terrorism,” it certainly was, but it has now come to light that Jabbar may not have acted alone. New Orleans’ WDSU reported Tuesday:
Iraqi authorities have arrested an ISIS suspect linked to the New Year’s terror attack on Bourbon Street.
The Supreme Judicial Council of Iraq said the arrest came after an official U.S. request for assistance in investigating the attack. The suspect’s name and role in the attack have not been released.
The U.S. Sun reported Wednesday:
The First Karkh Investigation Court "identified the identity of the accused and arrested him in Iraq as he is a member of what is called the Foreign Operations Office of the terrorist ISIS organization," the Iraq judiciary said. Iraqi officials will now try the man under their own anti-terrorism laws for being a member of ISIS.
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So was Shamsud-Din Jabbar carrying out his attack on orders from outside the country? Were Islamic State jihadis in Iraq or elsewhere directing his actions? Or did a jihadi from the U.S. manage to escape to Iraq, only to find himself being apprehended there? Was Jabbar operating as part of a multinational jihad network, and if so, is it still operating? Are there other such networks active inside the U.S.? Is the FBI, as it is being depoliticized and reformed now, working on this, rather than spending all its time hounding angry parents at school board meetings and pro-life Catholics? We can hope.
