Photo Credit: YouTubeBy Jonathan Dienst.
A man who assaulted a group of NYPD officers with a hatchet before they shot him dead committed “an act of terror,” the city’s top cop said Friday.
“We at this time believe that he acted alone,” Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Friday. “We would describe him as self-radicalized. We would describe him as self-directed in his activities.”
Asked directly if Zale Thompson could be considered a homegrown terrorist or a “lone wolf,” investigators said “it appears at this point” that terror was the suspect’s “intent,” though police stressed the investigation was in its preliminary stages.
Police obtained a warrant to search Thompson’s computer for clues about Thursday’s daytime assault in Queens, which left Officer Kenneth Healy with a critical but stable head injury and Officer Joseph Meeker with a wounded arm.
Thompson’s activity on social media indicated he was a convert to Islam and included rants about injustices in American society and oppression abroad but offered no clear evidence of any direct affiliation with terror groups, police said.
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Citizen Jihadists: ISIS uses ‘lone wolves’ to mount cheap, effective attacks on US soil
By Perry Chiaramonte.
Al Qaeda spent less than $1 million on its signature 9/11 attack, but Islamic State has found an even more cost-effective way to strike on American soil – inspiring psychotic sympathizers to commit “lone wolf” attacks that blur the line between random crime and terrorism, say experts.
Grisly photos and video of severed heads and mutilated bodies tweeted out and posted on the Internet, combined with explicit calls to kill, have allowed Islamic State to turn American citizens into weapons, say experts. The new technique requires no infiltration by sleeper cells and no planning, coordination or logistics. Yet, it is proving extremely effective at spreading fear, they say.
“If you can kill a disbelieving American or European, especially the spiteful and filthy French, or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever, then rely upon Allah and kill him in any manner or way however it may be,” urged a speaker on a video Islamic State released last month.
A law enforcement bulletin obtained last month by FoxNews.com warned that Islamic State fighters have increased calls for “lone wolves” to attack U.S. soldiers in America.
“You could literally search for soldiers, find their town, photos of them, look for address in Yellowbook or something,” a tweet attributed to Islamic State read. “Then show up and slaughter them.”
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Video Claims to Show U.S. Military Aid in Islamic State Hands
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ISIS Invasion Traps Iraqi Christians in Their Own Country
By Bindings: Reflections on Faith, Life, and Good Books.
“We tried very hard, very hard to raise the banner. The world remained silent. Now the devastation is a gradual death.”
The voice of Juliana Taimoorazy, Founder and President of Iraqi Christian Relief Council, clears the clack-clack of roadway background noise. She is driving home from yet another conference concerning the suffering of her fellow Christians in Iraq.1 Yesterday, she met in D.C. with world leaders of the persecuted Yazidis, another Iraqi religious minority.
“The majority of death that happened in the Christian community was [around] 2005,” continues Taimoorazy, referring to earlier mass murder. Now at least one quarter of Iraq’s Christian population, offered only the options to convert or die, have fled to Iraq’s Kurdish north where they are crammed into schools and churches, sleeping in pews and courtyards. They own absolutely nothing. And the northern Kurdish government has just ordered all convents and schools to empty so school can begin. “The winter is upon them,” Taimoorazy explains, “The time aid gets to our people, they are dying…devastated. This is a human tragedy.”
Massacre is nothing new to Assyrian Christians. As a native but historically non-Arab community, they have always faced periodic persecution, especially after the rise of Islam. During the last decade, however, such genocide has garnered a new synonym—eradication. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) invasion of Iraq yanked loose the last Jenga block. Since it declared a Middle Eastern caliphate in June, ISIS has militarily claimed its nation city-by-city, imposing sharia law and driving Christians into the ever-shrinking shelter of northern Iraq and Syria. In the key town of Mosul, recently captured by ISIS forces, only forty Christians remain of the city’s original eight to ten thousand. In the words of Dr. Gary Burg, Professor of New Testament and Middle Eastern journalist for the Huffington Post, “We survived Genghis Khan,” Iraqi Christians declare, “but we’re not sure we can survive this.”
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