New Orleans terrorist’s allegiance to ISIS shows group are still radicalizing – even in the US

The New Orleans terrorist’s pledge of allegiance to ISIS came as a shock to many who felt the infamous terror group had long been defeated.

But Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the 42-year-old Army vet from Texas who mowed down dozens of New Year’s revelers, killing 14 and injuring many more on Bourbon Street on Jan. 1, was flying an ISIS flag on his rented truck.

Jabbar also posted five videos claiming to have been “inspired by ISIS” and expressing a “desire to kill” prior to his spree, which ended with him being gunned down by police after he exited the vehicle.

”ISIS might have changed over the years but the way they work and influence people is similar,” Kerry O’Brien Smith, a research head with the American Leadership and Policy Foundation who specializes in protecting children from radicalization, told The Post of the group, who briefly imposed an evil and ultra-hardline Muslim regime in the Middle East ten years ago.

“We’re now seeing older individuals getting radicalized,” Smith said. “ISIS is using the same methods they always have of projecting great strength and trying to excite those excited by violence.

“[Jabbar] fit the mold of the kind of person they go after. He’d had some personal and financial troubles so he was susceptible.”

Jabbar’s younger brother, Abdur Jabbar, 24, said Shamsud converted to Islam at a young after initially being raised Christian but described him as a “caring” and “smart.” He told The New York Times  what his brother did “does not represent Islam. This is more some type of radicalization, not religion.”

Jabbar – who had also planted improvised explosive devices around the area of his attack, non of which exploded – had been divorced twice and had financial troubles, court papers revealed.

Smith said ISIS mainly reach people in the US online. Even though most ISIS-promoting accounts have been kicked off all the major social media platforms, the group has grown more cunning as a result.

“Once they were interested in acquiring more territory, now it’s more looking to capture minds. They appeal to those who think they are joining a great community of freedom fighters. They’re still out there, on videos, in chatrooms – you name it.”

The Houston mosque where it’s rumored Jabbar was a member also has a fiery imam named Elad Soudan who’s shown in online videos making  antisemitic statements, and sources told The Post they believed Jabbar may have been radicalized there.

ISIS, also known as ISIL or Daesh, is an acronym for the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq. In the chaos following the end of Saddam Hussein’s reign over Iraq and initial uprisings in Syria, the group started seizing land in 2014 after breaking away from Al-Qaeda.  

They quickly established their own “caliphate” – a self-proclaimed Islamic holy state.

ISIS seized the city of Raqqa in Syria January 2014, and it was declared the capital of the caliphate and residents were forced to adhere to the group’s harsh 7th-century style brand of Islamism.

Most sinister to terror analysts at the time was ISIS’ unusually polished and Western-style media operations that sprang up so soon after the group’s formation, with videos showing fearsome-looking ISIS operatives beheading non-Muslims.

One video apparently showed the kidnap and beheading of as many as 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya in 2015, which dominated the news and social media.

They also executed Western journalists who had been working in Iraq on camera, accompanied by screeds against the west.

ISIS’ Al-Hayat Media Center was up and running in 2014 and began publishing a magazine called “Dabiq” that summer. It was surprisingly successful and before long ordinary European and American Muslims were signing up en mass to go to Raqqa and join the caliphate.

A charismatic Senegales-born jihadist named Oscar Diaby from Nice, France was almost singlehandedly credited with recruiting dozens of teenage boys and young men in France to Syria from roughly 2013 to 2016.

Diaby disseminated slick videos showing kids brandishing Kalashnikovs and before long, many were showing up at local airports with suitcases and tickets to Turkey.

At its peak, ISIS controlled a huge swath of territory from western Syria to the outskirts of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

But by 2019, thanks to a coalition of Kurdish and Arab soldiers with backup from US, British and French special forces, ISIS lost its last stronghold in Syria, its leaders were assassinated and it was toppled from power, marking the end of the caliphate.

Or so it seemed.

Nowadays ISIS has gone more underground, according to several experts interviewed by The Post.

They are focused more on Afghanistan and parts of Africa, particularly the dangerous and terrorist-ridden Sahel region, a large area in the north of the Continent, they said.

They use two media sites, usually publishing in Arabic. One is called the War and Media Agency and the other Voice of Khorasan, which disseminate ISIS propaganda as stealthily as possible on messaging apps like Telegram, Kick and the now-defunct Surespot.

About a year ago, ISIS created two fake video channels made to look like CNN and Al Jazeera networks and posted them on two Facebook pages, two YouTube channels, and two accounts on X, according to a report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The content was made to look as if it were official network fare but in fact was pro-ISIS propaganda.

“ISIS has lost territory and they’ve lost power but their propaganda is still very powerful and effective online,” Jean-Charles Brisard, president of the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, told The Post Thursday.

“From what we can see (Jabbar) had no contact directly with ISIS leadership. Most of the perpetrators of ISIS-inspired terrorism in the West are the same way and we have had cases of French military officers being radicalized here as well.

“They usually join based on watching or reading the propaganda.”

Additional reporting by Isabel Vincent