ISIS official arrested in Iraq over suspected links to New Orleans attacker who killed 15 in car ramming
29 April 2025, 20:45
An ISIS official was arrested in Iraq over suspicions that he is involved in inciting the terror attack in New Orleans, which left 15 people killed and 35 injured.
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The suspect behind the attack drove directly at crowds of people celebrating New Year’s Eve on Bourbon Street, located in New Orleans' French Quarter.
Jabbar sped down Bourbon Street, running over some victims and ramming others, authorities said at the time.
He then exited his pick-up truck and opened fire on the public. He was identified as 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar, a US citizen from Texas and US army veteran.
An official with the so-called Islamic State (IS) group has now been detained in Iraq, suspected of being involved with inciting the pickup truck-ramming attack in New Orleans,.
Iraqi authorities had received requests from the US to help in the investigation of the attack in the predawn hours of New Year's Day, Iraqi judicial officials said.
The FBI had found an ISIS flag inside the rented pickup truck that Jabbar, a US Army veteran, drove into crowds, and said they were working to determine any potential associations with terrorist organisations.
After driving his pickup truck onto a pavement around a police car blocking an entrance to Bourbon Street and striking the New Year's revellers, he crashed into construction equipment, authorities said.
He then opened fire on police officers and Bourbon Street crowds, and was shot and killed by the officers, authorities said.
The FBI said shortly after the attack that it was investigating the crime as a terrorist act and did not believe the driver acted alone.
"We are aggressively running down every lead, including those of his known associates," FBI assistant special agent in charge Alethea Duncan said.
A number of weapons and two improvised explosive devices were found at the scene, with the attack being investigated as a terrorist incident.
Several other explosive devices were found elsewhere in the French Quarter.
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A senior police officer said it was "very intentional" and the perpetrator was "hell-bent" on creating "carnage". Some 300 police officers were at the scene during the attack, with two having been shot.
Iraqi officials said that Baghdad's Al-Karkh Investigative Court specified the suspect who was later detained and turned out to be a member of IS's foreign operations office.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, did not release the name of the suspect, only saying that he is an Iraqi citizen.
The officials said the man will be put on trial in accordance with the country's anti-terrorism law, adding that Iraq is committed to international co-operation in fighting terrorism.
Despite its defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, IS still has sleeper cells that carry out deadly attack in both countries as well as other parts of the world.
The group once attracted tens of thousands of fighters and supporters from around the world to come to Syria and Iraq, and at its peak ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom and was notorious for its brutality.
It beheaded civilians, slaughtered 1,700 captured Iraqi soldiers in a short period, and enslaved and raped thousands of women from the Yazidi community, one of Iraq's oldest religious minorities.
