the suspect had already been to the scene twice to scout

The suspect in the attack in New Orleans, accused of having killed 14 people on January 1, went there twice at the end of the year to prepare the attack and filmed the street with connected glasses where he drove into the crowd, the FBI said at a press conference on Sunday. During his first trip to the largest city in Louisiana, for a few days starting October 30, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old American citizen, resident of Texas, former real estate developer, used the company’s connected glasses Meta to film the French Quarter. The glasses were found on the suspect after his death. He was therefore wearing them on the day of the attack, but did not activate them to broadcast his attack live.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar made a second trip before the attack, said federal police agent Lyonel Myrthil. This stay, which took place on November 10, remains quite vague for the moment. The suspect, a former soldier, also went to Cairo for ten days in the summer of 2023 before staying in Canada immediately for three days. The FBI said it was looking for anyone who met him at that time to establish the reasons for these trips. Given that an Islamic State (IS) flag was found in the ram vehicle and that the suspect proclaimed his support for ISIS in several videos, the FBI is treating the case as a “terrorist act”. The attack created a wave of emotion in the United States and internationally. US President Joe Biden will travel to New Orleans this Monday to “share the pain of bereaved families”.