WASHINGTON: As investigators learn more about the man who pledged allegiance to the Daesh group, or ISIS, and killed 14 people with a truck on New Year’s Day in New Orleans, a key question remains: How did a veteran and one-time employee of a major corporation become radicalized?
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia said on Thursday that videos made by Shamsud-Din Jabbar just before the attack showed the 42-year-old Texas native supported Daesh, claimed to have joined the militant group before last summer and believed in a “war between the believers and nonbelievers.”
While the FBI was looking into his “path to radicalization,” evidence collected since the attack showed that Jabbar was “100 percent inspired by ISIS,” said Raia.
Jabbar, who authorities said acted alone, was killed in a shootout with police.
His half-brother, Abdur Jabbar, said in an interview that Jabbar, who had worked for audit firm Deloitte, abandoned Islam in his 20s or 30s, but had recently renewed his faith.

Abdur Jabbar told Reuters in Beaumont, Texas, where Jabbar was born and raised, that he had no idea when his half-brother became radicalized.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who investigated terrorism cases and is on an advisory council to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, said Jabbar did not fit the typical profile of those radicalized by Daesh.
Jabbar served for 10 years in the US Army and was in his 40s, Soufan noted, explaining that people who fall prey to Daesh recruitment are typically much younger.
“This is a guy who … went from being a patriot to being an Daesh terrorist,” said Soufan.
Attackers responsible for a range of deadly strikes have claimed a link to Daesh and other jihadist groups.
They included the lone survivor of the Islamist squad that killed 130 people across Paris in 2015, the man who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Florida in 2016, and the man who drove a truck into a crowded bike path in 2017 in New York City, killing eight people.
Some attacks, like those in 2015 in Paris, were carried out by trained Daesh operatives. But investigators found no evidence of a direct role for the terrorist group in others.

Online recruitment

It is still unclear what contact Jabbar might have had with overseas extremist groups.
US officials and other experts say Daesh conducts most of its recruiting in online chatrooms and over encrypted communications apps since losing the “caliphate” it overran in 2014 in Iraq and Syria to a US-led military coalition. Even as the coalition continues hitting the group’s remaining holdouts, Daesh has stepped up operations in Syria while its Afghanistan- and Africa-based affiliates have kept recruiting, expanding their networks and inspiring attacks.
US officials say Daesh has used the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Israel’s war in Gaza to boost its recruitment.
Nate Snyder, a former US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) counterterrorism official, said both international and US-based extremist groups follow a similar playbook to draw in new recruits.
The groups use social media to push their message and then move discussions to encrypted app such as Telegram, which could evolve into one-on-one conversations, Snyder said.
“Then people feel like they’re part of a community,” said Snyder, who left DHS in December and joined the race to chair the Democratic National Committee.
Recruits could either receive direct orders or self-radicalize to take action, Snyder said.
Individuals susceptible to recruitment “might have lost their jobs, might have had a mental health crisis, might have just concluded that however hard they’ve tried, they never belong,” said Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former British diplomat who led a UN team that monitors Daesh and Al-Qaeda.
The main appeal of Daesh is its determination to establish a Sunni Muslim “caliphate” ruled by Islamic law, unlike the Taliban, which “has sold out to Afghan nationalism,” or Al-Qaeda, members of which have cooperated with Iran’s Shiite Muslim-run government, he said.
“People that are carrying out those attacks may never in their lives have actually met somebody who is a member of Daesh,” said Fitton-Brown, a senior adviser to the Counter-Extremism Project, a policy and research organization. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t carry out an Daesh-inspired attack.” Crashing cars into crowds or staging stabbing rampages “are unsophisticated, very low-budget attacks (that) are almost impossible to defend against,” he continued. “If you are determined enough to kill unsuspecting public, you are going to be able to do it.”

SEOUL: South Korean investigators sought to arrest impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol at his residence Friday over a failed martial bid, but local media reported security forces were blocking their attempts.
Yoon, who has already been suspended from duty by lawmakers, would become the first sitting president in South Korean history to be arrested if the warrant is carried out.
The president, who issued a bungled declaration on December 3 that shook the vibrant East Asian democracy and briefly lurched it back to the dark days of military rule, faces imprisonment or, at worst, the death penalty.
“The execution of the arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol has begun,” said the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO), which is probing Yoon’s short-lived declaration of martial law, with its officials and police seen entering the president’s residence.
CIO investigators including senior prosecutor Lee Dae-hwan were let through heavy security barricades to enter the residence to attempt to execute their warrant to detain Yoon, AFP reporters saw.
But they were “blocked by a military unit inside” after entering, the Yonhap news agency reported.
They later “moved past” that unit to “confront security service” members inside the residence.

It had been unclear whether the Presidential Security Service, which still protects Yoon as the country’s sitting head of state, would comply with investigators’ warrants.
Members of his security team have previously blocked attempted police raids of the presidential residence, but it was not immediately clear which units had blocked investigators Friday.
Yoon’s legal team decried the attempt to execute the arrest warrant, vowing to take further legal action against the move.
“The execution of a warrant that is illegal and invalid is indeed not lawful,” Yoon’s lawyer Yoon Kap-keun said.
Dozens of police buses and hundreds of uniformed police lined the street outside the compound in central Seoul, AFP reporters saw.
Some 2,700 police and 135 police buses have been deployed to the area to prevent clashes, Yonhap reported, after Yoon’s supporters faced off with anti-Yoon demonstrators Thursday.
Yoon has been holed up inside the residence since a court approved the warrant to detain him earlier this week, vowing to “fight” authorities seeking to question him over his failed martial law bid.

South Korean media have reported that CIO officials want to arrest Yoon and take him to their office in Gwacheon near Seoul for questioning.
After that, he can be held for up to 48 hours on the existing warrant. Investigators need to apply for another arrest warrant to keep him in custody.
After staging chaotic protests Thursday, a handful of Yoon’s die-hard supporters, which include far-right YouTube personalities and evangelical Christian preachers, had camped outside his compound all night — some holding all-night prayer sessions.
“Illegal warrant is invalid” they chanted early Friday, as police and media gathered outside the residence.
“Yoon Suk Yeol, Yoon Suk Yeol,” they yelled, waving red glow sticks.
Pro-Yoon protester Rhee Kang-san told AFP many were “rooting for the president” to survive the arrest attempt.
“We are sending him our wishes. Many of our colleagues stayed overnight to show their support. We will continue to do the same today, no matter what happens later,” he said.
Yoon’s lawyer confirmed to AFP Thursday that the impeached leader remained inside the presidential compound.
Yoon’s legal team had already filed for an injunction to a constitutional court to block the warrant, calling the arrest order “an unlawful and invalid act,” and also submitted an objection to the Seoul court that ordered it.
But the head of the CIO, Oh Dong-woon, has warned that anyone trying to block authorities from arresting Yoon could themselves face prosecution.
Along with the summons, a Seoul court issued a search warrant for his official residence and other locations, a CIO official told AFP.
South Korean officials have previously failed to execute similar arrest warrants for lawmakers — in 2000 and 2004 — due to party members and supporters blocking police for the seven days the warrants were valid.