Officials investigating alleged Chattanooga gunman's 2014 trip to Jordan

U.S. law enforcement officials investigating the Chattanooga shooting that killed four U.S. Marines Thursday are focusing on why alleged gunman Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez bought a one-way ticket to Jordan last year and then spent seven months overseas before returning to the United States through Doha, Qatar, in November, according to officials briefed on the investigation.

Investigators are also seeking to determine whether Adbulazeez had any contact with Islamic militants during his travels between April and November of 2014, the officials said.

Ed Reinhold, the FBI special agent in charge of the case, said in a press conference Friday that agents so far have uncovered no evidence linking Abdulazeez to the Islamic State or any other terror group.

“We have no indication that he was inspired by or directed by anyone other than himself,” Reinhold told reporters.
 
Still, investigators are seeking to retrace Abdulazeez’s path while he was in Jordan as well as to uncover any other clues — including possible contacts he made through social media — that might have led him to launch an attack on two U.S. military installations, killing the four Marines and wounding three others.

One issue officials will be focused on during the investigation is whether Abdulazeez may have been radicalized during his travels and if he entered Syria, a point addressed Friday by Matthew Olsen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, in an interview with Yahoo News’ Bianna Golodryga.
 
“Did he use Jordan as a jumping off point to go to Syria?” Olsen said.

Olsen also said that there are “a number of indications that he was at least inspired by extremist propaganda.” Islamic State propagandists have repeatedly exhorted followers to target U.S. military installations, Olsen said, noting that such installations have been “No. 1 on their hit list.”

Moreover, Olsen added, “This occurs against the backdrop of an onslaught of ISIS propaganda, and we’ve seen case after case of young men who have been inspired to act.”

Abdulazeez was a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Kuwait and graduated from the University of Tennessee in 2012 with a degree in electrical engineering. He was a martial arts enthusiast who had been working at Superior Essex Inc., a wire and manufacturing firm in Franklin, Tenn., CNN reported.

Just three days before the attack, he posted entries on a blog praising jihad, according to a report by SITE, a website that tracks Islamic terrorism.

In those posts, SITE reported, Abdulazeez invoked the martial activities of the “Sahaba” — companions of the Prophet Mohammed.

”Every one of them fought Jihad for the sake of Allah,” Abdulazeez wrote.

So far, little is publicly known about his potential path to radicalization. Law enforcement officials confirm they are examining Abdulazeez’s computer to find out whether there were communications through Twitter or other social media platforms — a prime way in which militants in the United States have been inspired, if not directed, to plot or commit attacks, officials said.

But tracing such communications has become increasingly difficult because jihadis are becoming far more sophisticated in using encryption. FBI Director James Comey told reporters last week that the FBI has in some recent cases lost track of militants after initial contacts on Twitter.

“Someone signs up to be a Twitter follower of one or more of the ISIL tweeters and then one of the ISIL tweeters will follow them back,” Comey said, describing what has been a typical pattern. “And frequently we see them move to direct messaging on Twitter. And then we'll see the move — here’s the info [on how] you can contact me securely and you can contact me there…”

Still, jihadists on Twitter celebrated the Chattanooga attacks, with one extolling Abdulazeez as a hero who “walked the way we kept talking of” and another calling him a “soldier of the Islamic State,” according to SITE.  

The jihadi tweeters also sought to justify the attack and lambasted the media coverage as an example of Western hypocrisy, according to the SITE report.

One such tweet by someone writing under the name Tunsi Marwan read: “A single man attack a Marines base: ‘Cowardly attack.’ A man pilot a drone from Arizona to kill kids in Afghanistan: ‘Hero.’ Pathetic world.”