ISIS claims Texas its 1st US attack, but has no proof
Phoenix/ Houston/ Islamabad: ISIS on Tuesday claimed responsibility for an attack on a Texas exhibit of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in which the two gunmen were killed. The ISIS claimed responsibility on its official online radio station, saying “two soldiers of the caliphate” carried out the attack in Garland, Texas. The claim, however, offered no hints about how the ISIS purportedly made contact or directed the two attackers from Phoenix in Sunday’s failed assault.
Phoenix/ Houston/ Islama bad, May 5: ISIS claimed responsibility on Tuesday for an attack on a Texas exhibit of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in which the two gunmen were killed.
The ISIS claimed responsibility on its official online radio station, saying “two soldiers of the caliphate” carried out the attack on Sunday in Garland, Texas.
The claim, however, offered no hints about how the ISIS purportedly made contact or directed the two attackers from Phoenix in Sunday’s failed assault.
Experts warn that militant groups have been known to claim credit for attacks in which they were not involved.
US government sources close to the case have said investigators were scouring electronic communications sent and received by the dead gunmen, roommates Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, of Phoenix, for evidence of contacts between them and militant groups overseas, most notably ISIS.
Simpson and Soofi were killed by the police when they opened fire with assault rifles at the cartoon exhibit and contest. An unarmed security guard was wounded.
Simpson, 31, had linked himself to ISIS in a tweet posted just before the attack.
Court documents showed Simpson had been under federal surveillance since 2006 and was convicted in 2011 of lying to FBI agents about his desire to join violent jihad in Somalia.
FBI agents and the police searched the two men’s home at the Autumn Ridge apartments in north- central Phoenix, cordoning off the complex and evacuating residents for several hours in the early morning.
“I believe that perhaps he might have just snapped when he heard about the cartoon contest,” Kristina Sitton, a Phoenix attorney who defended him in the case, told CNN.
“It certainly was a ... completely provocative event and I would see many people who were devout about their religion being upset.”
Garland mayor Douglas Athas said he did not make the decision to hold the exhibit in town, since the local school district owned the building where it was held.
Soofi was a popular schoolboy in Pakistan but struggled to adjust to the United States after moving there as a teen, his Pakistani friends said on Tuesday.
Soofi’s story appeared to trace a familiar arc for some Western Islamists — disappointment, alienation, and a search for belonging that ended with the embrace of militancy.
That is what the police say inspired Soofi and Simpson to attack the exhibit and contest to draw Prophet Muhammad cartoons on Sunday.
Friends in Pakistan, who studied with Soofi at the elite International School of Islamabad, were stunned to discover that the police had identified him as was one of the attackers.
“When he was in Islamabad, he had a great life. His mom was an American who taught art at the school, he was in plays, popular with girls,” said one of Soofi’s best friends at school.
“His nickname was Goofy” because of his sense of humour, said the man, who declined to be identified to preserve his privacy.
Two Charlie Hebdo journalists have rejected any suggestion of similarities between a deadly attack on the French satirical magazine and the failed assault on a Muhammed cartoon event.
“There is absolutely no comparison,” JeanBaptiste Thoret, the magazine’s film critic, who only avoided the attack because he had been late for work, told Charlie Rose on PBS.
“You have a, as you said, a sort of anti- Islamic movement ( in Texas)... The problem of Charlie Hebdo is absolutely not the same,” added Mr Thoret, flanked by Gerard Biard, chief editor of Charlie Hebdo magazine.
— Reuters, PTI