The terrorist who massacred at least 15 people and injured about 30 on New Year's Eve in New Orleans acted alone, but the massacre could have been even more terrifying given that Shamsud-Din Jabbar had placed two rudimentary explosive devices in the area of the attack.
Having ruled out the presence of accomplices in Louisiana, the FBI continues to investigate whether there is a connection with the explosion of a Tesla pickup in front of Trump Towers in Las Vegas. The Agency has ruled out a connection for now, although it has emerged that Jabbar and the driver of the pickup were both military personnel, the latter still in service, and had been at the same base in North Carolina for a time, as well as both deployed to Afghanistan, and had used the same app, Turo, to rent their respective vehicles.
"We are confident, at this point in the investigation, that he did not have any accomplices," the agency's deputy assistant director, Christopher Raia, said in a press conference, denying previous reports that "many other people" were involved in the New Orleans attack.
This is also why the authorities have decided to reopen the French Quarter area and authorize the Sugar Bowl, the famous college football game scheduled for the evening of January 1st, which is attended by about 100,000 people every year, naturally with heavy security measures. The measures have been strengthened not only in the Louisiana city, but also in New York where the police presence has been increased in some places, including Trump Tower and Times Square. Jabbar, whose affiliation with ISIS is now beyond doubt and has also been confirmed by several videos in which the 42-year-old from Texas declared his loyalty to the terrorist group, had also placed two homemade bombs, one right on Bourbon Street and the other two blocks away.
Among the videos posted online by the killer, who served eight years in the military and was deployed in Afghanistan, one declared he had joined the Islamic State and another announced he wanted to kill relatives and friends. "He was 100% inspired by ISIS," Raia stressed.
Investigators also recovered three cell phones and two laptops linked to Jabbar, key elements in understanding how the killer was able to carry out, undisturbed, an attack of "premeditated and savage terrorism", as the FBI defined it. Law enforcement also searched an apartment rented on Airbnb in New Orleans that may have been the base for manufacturing the devices linked to the attack. While the United States is receiving solidarity from leaders and heads of state from all over the world - from the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, who reiterated Italy's commitment to fighting all forms of terrorism, to the Pope, who assured his spiritual closeness - Joe Biden has called an emergency meeting of his internal security team. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is taking advantage of the tragedy to attack the Democratic administration accusing it of having favored these acts of terrorism with an "open borders" policy, despite the two protagonists of the acts of violence in recent days being both Americans.
Then there is the other line of investigation, the one about the pickup that exploded in Las Vagas. The driver was named Matthew Alan Livelsberger and was an American soldier who served in Germany and in the special forces. At the time of the accident he was on vacation in Colorado and a relative reported that his wife had not heard from him for several days. A gunshot wound to the head was found on his body, which suggests that he committed suicide before the vehicle exploded.
(Online Union)