Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
An Islamic State terror group flag was found in the suspect’s vehicle, investigators said, as well as a bomb near the vehicle used in the attack.
Vehicles near the scene where a man drove a pickup truck into people in the French Quarter of New Orleans on Wednesday. Credit… Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times The F.B.I. has a broad definition of two kinds of terrorism: International terrorism is violent crime committed by people inspired by foreign terrorist organizations or nations, while domestic terrorism is any violent act meant to further ideological goals or intimidate civilians.
In the immediate aftermath of the New Orleans attack that killed at least 10 people and injured dozens more, there was some public confusion over whether it was a terror attack. The mayor of New Orleans at first said it was, but a local F.B.I. official countered that it was not. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and F.B.I. officials in Washington then said they were in fact investigating the incident as terrorism.
The F.B.I. said that in the attack, the suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen from Texas, drove a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street around 3:15 a.m. on Wednesday. A flag of the Islamic State terror group was found in the vehicle, the agency said. One law enforcement official familiar with the investigation described the flag as “furled,” suggesting its significance was not immediately apparent to law enforcement responding to the chaotic crime scene.
F.B.I. officials, who are typically cautious in public statements until investigators can gather more evidence about a suspect’s intentions, said on Wednesday that as law enforcement officials learned more — including about the discovery of a cooler containing an improvised bomb next to the suspect’s vehicle — they became more certain it was a terror attack. The combination of a truck used as a weapon, along with the flag and the bomb, led investigators to believe that the perpetrator’s goal was to cause additional casualties on civilians.
Many elected officials and member of the public think of terrorism primarily as a method of violence, such as using a vehicle, gun, or bomb to kill random civilians on a street. To investigators and prosecutors, however, motive or ideology is an important part of defining terrorism.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
