Slain suspect in Texas attack had ties to terrorism
THE WASHINGTON POST
GARLAND, Texas — Investigators worked Monday to retrace the steps of two Phoenix men who were gunned down by police after allegedly traveling 1,000 miles across the Southwest to open fire on a provocative exhibit that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad.
Authorities identified the assailants in the Sunday night attack as Elton
FBI arrested suspect in 2010
Simpson, 30, a Muslim convert whom the FBI had previously targeted in a terrorism investigation, and his roommate, Nadir Soofi, 34.
Their bodies were left lying in the street for more than 12 hours near the west entrance of the Curtis Culwell Center, an arena and exhibition hall in this suburb northeast of Dallas, as investigators cautiously searched their vehicle for bombs.
No explosives were found, although the gunmen wore body armor and had been carrying extra ammunition and suitcases in their car, said Joe Harn, a spokesman for Garland police. An unarmed security guard was shot in the leg. He was treated at a hospital and released.
Authorities were cautious about ascribing a motive, but there seemed little doubt that the shooting marked a collision of religious fundamentalists and free-speech provocateurs in a replay of jihadist attacks in Paris and Copenhagen inspired by cartoons of the Islamic prophet.
The inflammatory Texas event, dubbed the Muhammad Art Exhibit, promised a $10,000 prize for the best cartoon depicting the founder of Islam. The contest was sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a New York-based organization that has been labeled an anti-Muslim “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights network that tracks domestic extremists.
Pamela Geller, the group’s president, is known for blogging conspiracy theories and incendiary rhetoric against what she calls the “Islamization” of the United States. The keynote speaker at Sunday’s event was Geert Wilders, a firebrand Dutch parliamentarian who has sought to ban the Quran in the Netherlands and has been marked for assassination by al-Qaida and its allies.
The event’s organizers said they had wanted to make a stand for free speech following the January attack by armed jihadists against the Paris newsroom of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper that routinely made fun of Islamic extremists.
“Our Judeo-Christian culture is far superior to the Islamic one,” Wilders said in his speech Sunday, shortly before the gunfire erupted, according to a text of the address posted on his personal website. “I can give you a million reasons. But here is an important one: We have got humor and they don’t.”
The exhibit’s sponsors were ready for conflict. They had hired dozens of security guards and off-duty police officers — including a heavily armed SWAT team — to protect the approximately 200 attendees at the invitation-only event. Some participants appeared to revel in the fact that the show was drawing worldwide attention from jihadists, who posted social media messages urging followers in the United States to launch an attack in Garland.
Enter the two gunmen, whom Garland police said drove up to a police car that was blocking an entrance to the exhibition hall and opened fire with assault rifles. Both men were quickly killed by one of the hired guards — a local traffic patrolman whose name has not been released — who returned fire with a semiautomatic pistol.
“He did a very good job and he probably saved lives,” said Harn, the police spokesman.
In Phoenix on Monday, police and federal agents likewise combed a low-rise apartment complex where Simpson and Soofi lived. Parts of the complex were evacuated a few hours before dawn as specialists searched the pair’s home for booby traps, but they found none.
Court documents show that Simpson was born in Illinois and converted to Islam at a young age. The government began investigating him in 2006, recording conversations between him and a paid informant.
In May 2009, according to a federal court document, Simpson told an FBI informant: “It’s time to go to Somalia, brother.” He added: “It’s time. I’m tellin’ you man. We gonna make it to the battlefield. … It’s time to roll.”
Simpson was arrested by the FBI in January 2010 after a lengthy investigation and charged with lying to agents in connection with terrorism. Authorities suspected he was trying to fly to Somalia, but Simpson claimed at the time he intended to travel to South Africa to go to school to study Islam.
Following a bench trial, a judge dropped the terrorism allegations, citing insufficient evidence. The judge, Mary H. Murguia, said in March 2011 that the government had failed to prove that Simpson intended to wage violent jihad in Somalia.
Murguia reduced the charge to making a false statement to federal officials and sentenced Simpson to three years probation. Authorities also returned his passport, which they had confiscated after his arrest.
In recent months, the FBI had begun monitoring Simpson again because of postings on social media in which he praised the Islamic State and other radical groups, officials said.
Minutes before the shooting, someone posted a message from a Twitter account linked to Simpson: “May Allah accept us as mujahideen,” with the hashtag “#texasattack.”-