By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA and JEFF MARTIN
An official with the Islamic State group has been detained in Iraq, suspected of being concerned with inciting the pickup truck-ramming assault in New Orleans that killed greater than a dozen folks celebrating the beginning of 2025, Iraqi authorities stated.
Iraqi authorities had acquired requests from the U.S. to assist in the investigation of the assault within the predawn hours of New Years Day within the famed French Quarter of New Orleans, Iraqi judicial officers stated.
A U.S. Military veteran driving a pickup truck that bore the flag of the Islamic State group sped down Bourbon Road, working over some victims and ramming others, authorities stated on the time. The Federal Bureau of Investigation recognized the driving force as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen from Texas, and stated it was working to find out any potential associations with terrorist organizations.
After driving his pickup truck onto a sidewalk round a police automotive blocking an entrance to Bourbon Road and putting the New Yr’s revelers, he crashed into development gear, authorities stated. He then opened hearth on law enforcement officials and Bourbon Road crowds, and was shot and killed by the officers, authorities stated. Investigators discovered weapons and what seemed to be an improvised explosive machine within the automobile, together with different gadgets elsewhere within the French Quarter.
Iraqi officers stated that Baghdad’s Al-Karkh Investigative Court docket specified the suspect who was later detained and turned out to be a member of the Islamic State group’s overseas operations workplace.
The officers, who spoke on situation of anonymity in step with laws, didn’t launch the title of the suspect, solely saying that he’s an Iraqi citizen. The officers stated the person will probably be placed on trial in accordance with the nation’s anti-terrorism legislation, including that Iraq is dedicated to worldwide cooperation in preventing terrorism.
“The FBI’s investigation into the New Yr’s Day terrorist assault in New Orleans stays energetic and ongoing,” the FBI stated in a press release Tuesday.
“Whereas we proceed to work with our legislation enforcement companions, each within the U.S. and internationally, primarily based on the data to this point, we proceed to imagine that Shamsud Din-Jabbar acted alone in finishing up the assault on Bourbon Road,” the company stated, saying that anybody with data is inspired to contact them.
Regardless of its defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, Islamic State nonetheless has sleeper cells that perform lethal assault in each nations in addition to different elements of the world.
The group as soon as attracted tens of 1000’s of fighters and supporters from around the globe to come back to Syria and Iraq, and at its peak dominated an space half the scale of the UK and was infamous for its brutality. It beheaded civilians, slaughtered 1,700 captured Iraqi troopers in a brief interval, and enslaved and raped 1000’s of girls from the Yazidi neighborhood, one in all Iraq’s oldest spiritual minorities.
Abdul-Zahra reported from Baghdad. Martin reported from Atlanta.
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