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New Orleans ISIS attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, discussed killing his own family and why he joined ISIS in five videos that he uploaded to Facebook hours and minutes before this week’s attack.

This was revealed at a news conference held Thursday by Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division.

“There were five videos posted on Jabbar’s Facebook account, which are time-stamped beginning at 1:29 am and the last at 3:02 am,” Raia said.

“In the first video, Jabbar explains he originally planned to harm his family and friends but was concerned the news headlines would not focus on the ‘war between the believers and the disbelievers.’ Additionally, he stated he had joined ISIS before this summer,” Raia continued.

Listen:

Shortly after uploading the final video at 3:02 am, Jabbar drove a pickup truck with an ISIS flag into a crowd on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street at about 3:15 am, ultimately killing over a dozen people. He died during a shoot-out with the police.

Speaking with CNN afterward, his family members expressed shock at what he’d done, claiming that it sharply contrasted with his allegedly kind, soft-spoken behavior.

“He was very well-tempered, slow to anger,” Jabbar’s brother, 24-year-old Abdur Jabbar, asserted. “That’s why it was so unbelievable that he would be capable of something like this.”

The two were so close that they spoke almost daily this past year and a half. Growing up, they regularly attended a mosque, but according to Abdur, his brother never showed any signs of radicalization.

“He’s never shared anything like that or of that nature with me,” the brother said. “He understood what it meant to be a Muslim… It wasn’t this tragedy. It was the complete opposite.”

“That’s what’s puzzling us,” Jabbar’s father, 65-year-old Rahim, added. “He wasn’t going through something that we knew of.”

Jabbar also previously served in the Army for over a decade, even going abroad to Afghanistan for a tour, before leaving the military in 2020.

Later that same year, he uploaded a video to YouTube in which he said his Army experience had taught him “the meaning of great service and what it means to be responsive and take everything seriously, dotting i’s and crossing t’s to make sure that things go off without a hitch.”

The video has since been deleted from YouTube but may be seen below:

According to reporting from Jennie Taer of the New York Post, Jabbar lived “in a run-down trailer park where he kept sheep and goats in the yard — just blocks from the local mosque.”

“Geese, chickens, and sheep roamed freely in Jabbar’s yard,” Taer, as well as two other Post writers, reported.

“One neighbor told The Post she spoke only Urdu, Pakistan’s national language. The neighborhood is also within walking distance of the local mosque, Masjid Bilal — where no one answered the telephone on Wednesday,” their reporting continued.

The mosque has since been accused of telling its patrons to not cooperate with the authorities:

Unfortunately, Jabbar’s neighbors knew little about him. One neighbor, Francois Venegas, described him as a “simple person” who kept to himself.

“[He was] pretty quiet … Just walking, [he would say] ‘Hello,’ ‘Hola,’ and that was it,” Venegas recalled.

“Jabbar had been arrested twice: once in Katy, Texas, for theft in 2002, court records show, and again three years later for driving without a valid license,” according to Taer.

“He had also been divorced twice, and the failed marriages apparently left him in financial ruin. Amid his second divorce in 2022, he said he had racked up more than $16,000 in credit card debt paying court fees and expenses for a second home,” the reporting continues.

Vivek Saxena
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