New audio recordings and video footage emerge of New Orleans attacker
The brother of the man accused of the New Orleans terror attack has said his actions were 'unbelievable', as ITV News' correspondent Robert Moore reports
Audio recordings of Shamsud-Din Jabbar expressing extremist beliefs that music, sex and intoxicants are evil were posted less than a year before he carried out his attack in New Orleans on New Year's Day.
A SoundCloud account made by the assailant posted three recordings as early as February 2024 exhibiting his fundamentalist religious views – showing how long he had been radicalised without authorities knowing.
In the early hours of January 1, Jabbar, 42, drove a pick up truck flying an Islamic State (IS) flag into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street, killing 14 people and injuring 35 others. After a shootout with police, Jabbar was also killed.
In his longest recording, Jabbar refers to music as being the "voice of Satan" particularly "poetry like rapping" which he believed drives people to take "intoxicants like marijuana, alcohol, sedatives, opioids, stimulants, and others".
In his interpretation of a scripture, Jabbar believed that music enticed people towards things that God had "forbidden" including "sex, vulgarity, violence, betrayal, arrogance, burglary, cheating, gratitude to our spouses, and others in general".
He said music "drives us to waste our wealth, sever the ties of kinship and even idolatry by calling us to worship those we make images of [...] or the artist themself".
As an example he made reference to a rap album, released in the early 2000s, which he blamed for a series of three murders he had observed in his neighbourhood. Jabbar had most recently been living in Houston, Texas.
The US Army veteran who had served in Afghanistan said the passages teach that "forbidding the evil is mandate on all of mankind" and that "all but the people who forbid the evil were destroyed".
The voice reading the religious scriptures matches the voice heard in a video of Jabbar advertising his real-estate company.
SoundCloud has not yet answered a request for comment.
In a video posted to YouTube in 2020, Shamsud-Din Jabbar confirmed he served in the US army and gave details about his real estate business
Before the attack on January 1, the FBI revealed that Jabbar posted five videos on Facebook proclaiming his support for the Islamic State (IS) before the incident.
Christopher Raia of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division said although investigations are ongoing, they currently do not believe anyone else was involved in what he called the "senseless attack".
Raia added that Jabbar had originally planned to harm his family, but decided against doing so, because he said he wanted news headlines to focus on "the war between believers and disbelievers".
The FBI believe Jabbar was self-radicalised, had no prior connects to the terror group, and planned his attack independently, highlighting the decentralised and unpredictable nature of these "lone wolf" attacks.
In a statement condemning the attack, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said: “We join the New Orleans Muslim community in extending our condolences to the families of those killed in the horrific, senseless and infuriating Bourbon Street attack.
"May God comfort the families of the victims, heal the injured and protect humanity from those who dare to commit such cowardly acts of mass violence."
Among the 14 dead are a 18-year-old aspiring nurse, a single mum, a father of two and a former Princeton university football star were among the dead.
On Friday the Bureau released new surveillance footage of Jabbar one hour before he committed the attack.
Additional doorbell footage captured hours before the attack, obtained by ITV News' US partner, CNN, shows Jabbar moving around a truck before getting in, driving forward, reversing back and getting out and then driving off.
Watch: Doorbell footage shows Shamsud-Din Jabbar hours before launching New Orleans attack
Giving a timeline of events, Raia said Jabbar picked up the rental vehicle in Houston, Texas, on December 30 before driving it to New Orleans on New Year's Eve.
Jabbar then posted several videos proclaiming his support for ISIS between around 1am and 3am before launching his attack.
Investigators found guns and improvised explosive devices in the vehicle. Raia said the FBI had recovered CCTV of Jabbar placing two improvised explosive devices in coolers in two separate locations.
The FBI have also recovered three phones and two laptops belonging to Jabbar, he added.
More than 400 tips have been received by the public, Raia said He urged anyone who knew Jabbar or might have seen him in New Orleans or Texas to contact the FBI.
Jeff Landry, the Governor of Louisiana, likened the ongoing investigation to sifting through the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
On Thursday, he said: "Over 1000 law enforcement agents, men and women, have been pouring over countless amounts of data, videos, surveillance, interviews, tracking down every possible lead that came to us."
New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick called the attack "evil".
The driver “defeated” safety measures in place to protect pedestrians, Supt Kirkpatrick said, and was “hell-bent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did".
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