New Orleans ISIS terrorist Shamsud-Din Jabbar had researched online what kind of car was used in a deadly German Christmas market attack — just hours before carrying out his well-planned New Year’s Day onslaught, the FBI said Tuesday.
Jabbar also searched for past shootings in New Orleans, the city’s Mardi Gras celebration and even how to access a balcony on the famed Bourbon Street, according to an initial review of his devices.
Some of the recon searches that Jabbar conducted date back to mid-November, investigators said.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar stashed a transmitter in the truck that was intended to detonate two bombs.
But he executed other searches mere hours before he rammed into revelers in the city’s historic French Quarter with a rented truck, killing 14 people and injuring at least 57 others, the feds said in their latest update.
“Just hours before the attack on Bourbon Street, he also searched for information about the car that rammed into innocent victims in a Christmas market in Germany just 10 days before,” the FBI said.
The attack in the German city of Magdeburg unfolded when an anti-Islam activist, identified as a Saudi doctor named Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, allegedly plowed into festive market-goers with a BMW — killing five people and wounding roughly 200 more on Dec. 20.
The details of Jabbar’s online searches emerged as investigators continued to probe his motive behind the deadly New Year’s Day rampage.
Jabbar captured on security cameras on a visit to New Orleans several weeks before the attack.
“Evidence obtained in the ongoing investigation indicates Jabbar became a more devout Muslim in 2022,” the FBI said in its update. “During this time, Jabbar began isolating himself from society. Around the spring of 2024, Jabbar began following extremist views.”
Jabbar, 42, who had previously served in the military and lived in Texas, proclaimed his allegiance to ISIS in chilling Facebook posts early on Jan. 1 and displayed a caliphate flag on the truck that he drove into the crowd of bystanders, authorities previously revealed.
In the hours before, he was captured on surveillance videos planting bombs hidden in plastic coolers across the city, officials said.
Jabbar had rigged the explosives with makeshift remote detonators cobbled together from readily available materials, including electric matches — or “hobby switches.”
He’d apparently been planning to activate the bombs from a transmitter in his truck, according to authorities, but was shot dead by cops before detonating them.
“To date, the FBI has reviewed thousands of videos and photos associated with this case,” the feds said.
“The FBI, along with our partners, continue to work around the clock to determine what motivated Shamsud-Din Jabbar to drive his truck into a crowd of people on Bourbon Street. Thanks to the overwhelming response from the public, the FBI is closer to getting answers for those families who lost loved ones and the other victims of the New Year’s Day attack.”
