Texas police shot dead two gunmen who reportedly opened fire outside the venue of a controversial cartoon contest depicting Prophet Mohammad in suburban Dallas on Sunday, thereby thwarting what could possibly have been a Charlie Hebdo-style attack that rocked Paris last January.
A security guard was injured in the shooting episode that brought back memories of the Paris attack that resulted in the death of 12 people in an act of revenge against the satirical magazine for publishing caricatures of the Prophet.
The New York-based American Freedom Defence Initiative (AFDI), which organized the cartoon contest in Garland in suburban Dallas, did indeed project it as a response to the Charlie Hebdo attack. Police did not immediately release details of the two men, one of whom was believed to have social media links with the militant Islamic State. Although the attack fizzled out, ISIS was cited by British newspaper as seeking to claim responsibility for the first such attack on American soil.
Garland Police chief Joe Harn said a police officer, using a duty pistol, did a good job, while the two suspects were using assault weapons. The security guard who was injured has been released from hospital. While the police chief did not give out the names of the two gunmen, ABC News, citing a senior FBI official, identified one of them as Elton Simpson, an Arizona man who was previously the subject of a terrorism investigation. A bomb squad converged on Simpson’s apartment in Phoenix, where police were conducting an initial search with a robot.
Officials are said to suspect Simpson as the person behind several Twitter messages sent out before the attack, the last of which came half an hour before the shooting, projecting the attackers as mujahideen. The AFDI, which offered a $10,000 prize for the best artwork or cartoon depicting the Prophet, has been projected as an anti-Islamic hate group by the Alabama-based Southern Poverty law Centre which tracks hate groups operating the US.
Speakers at the event, titled “Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest”, included Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician and anti-Islamic campaigner who figures on a jihadist hit list. Describing the shootout, Garland Mayor Douglas Athas said: “The first suspect was shot immediately. The second suspect was shot and wounded -- reached for his back pack. Of course officers not knowing what was in the backpack, shot him again. He was killed.”
AFDI president Pamela Geller said the contest was aimed at making a stand for free speech in response to violence over drawings of the Prophet, notably the Charlie Hebdo attack. In 2010, Geller had led a march to the site of a proposed Islamic centre in New York near the site of the destroyed Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre.