The militant Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s bid to attack a Texas venue that hosted a Prophet Mohammad cartoon contest, and threatened the United States with bigger and bitter strikes.
Making the claim on its official radio station Al Bhayan, ISIS said the two gunmen who were shot dead by Texas Police before they could execute a Charlie Hebdo-style attack were “soldiers of the caliphate”.
“We tell America that what is coming will be even bigger and bitter, and you will see the soldiers of the Islamic State do terrible things,” the dreaded terrorist group proclaimed, adding its soldiers “will hurt you (America), Allah permitting”.
One of the two men, Nadir Soofi, apparently graduated from the International School of Islamabad in 1998, The New York Times reported, citing a Facebook page. A cousin of Soofi, however, said he was born in the US and attended the University of Utah.
Although US authorities have rounded up several individuals over the past year while they were on the point of leaving the country to join ISIS, this is the first time the group claimed to have carried out an attack in America.
There was no immediate assessment from US law enforcement on whether it was an ISIS strike or a “lone wolf” type of attack by someone inspired by the extremist outfit.
The Texas Police, identifying the gunmen as Elton Simpson, 30, and Soofi, 34, said they lived in the same apartment complex in Phoenix. Some reports said that the two shared an apartment.
Simpson, who had converted to Islam while in high school, was said to be a regular at a Phoenix mosque, while the other ran a carpet cleaning business and also used to visit the same mosque.
The president of the Islamic Community Centre of Phoenix was quoted as saying that the two men were friends and did not give any sign of radicalization. Simpson, however, had been indicted by FBI in 2011 for reportedly planning to travel to Somalia to engage in “violent jihad”.
A US court sentenced him to three years of probation, but noted that the investigators could not prove the charge that he was proceeding for jihad. Federal investigators, however, did not have any information on Soofi, whose cousin told CNN: “We’re all devastated…We just need time to grieve as a family.”
Pamela Geller, president of the right-wing American Freedom Defense Initiative that organized the controversial cartoon contest, defended the event as pro-free speech.