GARLAND, Texas -- Law enforcement officials on Monday identified two men who were killed Sunday after they opened fire at an event where people were invited to present cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
One of the men, whom officials identified as Elton Simpson of Phoenix, had previously been identified by the FBI as a jihadist terrorism suspect. The other man was identified as Nadir Soofi, also of Phoenix, according to law enforcement officials.
Simpson, 30, was convicted in 2011 of lying to FBI agents -- denying that he had made plans to travel to Somalia, when in fact he had. Prosecutors charged that he wanted to go "for the purpose of engaging in violent jihad," but a judge ruled that the government had not proved that part of the charge, and sentenced him to three years' probation.
The FBI and police in Phoenix opened a new investigation into Simpson several months ago, after he began posting on social media about the Islamic State extremist group, according to law enforcement officials. As part of that inquiry, authorities monitored his online postings and occasionally kept him under surveillance, but they had no indication that he planned to launch the attack that occurred Sunday evening in Garland, the officials said.
The FBI had not previously investigated Soofi, 34, they said. Police officers and federal agents raided an apartment in Phoenix that neighbors identified as Simpson's home; public records show Soofi living in the same apartment complex, but it was not clear whether they lived together.
A Facebook page that appears to be Soofi's says he graduated from the International School of Islamabad, in Pakistan, in 1998, but it was not clear whether he was a Pakistani national. The page says he attended the University of Utah.
About the time of the attack, on a Twitter account with the name "Shariah is Light" that has since been suspended, someone posted using the hashtag #texasattack. The profile picture on the account is of Anwar al-Awlaki, a militant imam killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike in Yemen.
Al-Awlaki had repeatedly called for violence against cartoonists who, in his view, insulted the Prophet Muhammad.
"So what is the proper solution to this growing campaign of defamation?" al-Awlaki wrote in al-Qaida's Inspire magazine in 2010. "The medicine prescribed by the Messenger of Allah is the execution of those involved."
The Twitter post says that the writer and the man with him have pledged loyalty, "to Amirul Mu'mineen," a title, meaning commander of the faithful, that was used by early Muslim rulers and has been claimed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State. "May Allah accept us as mujahadeen."
Asked whether police were aware of that and similar messages, officer Joe Harn, a Garland police spokesman, said, "We are, but we don't know that it was those people that put that out."
Usama Shami, president of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix, a mosque 2 miles south of where the men lived, said the men used to go to the mosque and described Simpson as the extrovert of the two and a well-liked leader among the younger men there.
Simpson had worshipped for about a decade, but he quit showing up over the past two or three months, Shami said.
Shami said Simpson was known as Ibrahim. He did not show signs of politicization, Shami said. "His questions were pretty basic and religious," he said.
Soofi, who moved to Phoenix from Texas, had a pizza shop near the mosque called Cleopatra, which has since closed, Shami said.
Simpson first attracted the FBI's attention in 2006 because of his ties to Hassan Abu Jihaad, a former U.S. Navy sailor who had been arrested in Phoenix and was ultimately convicted of terrorism-related charges, according to court records. Jihaad was accused of leaking details about his ship's movements to operators of a website in London that openly espoused violent jihad against the U.S.
In the fall of 2006, the FBI asked one of its informants, Dabla Deng, a Sudanese immigrant, to befriend Simpson and ask for advice about Islam.
Over the next few years, Deng would tape his conversations with Simpson with a hidden recording device, accumulating more than 1,500 hours of conversations, according to court records.
"I'm telling you, man, we can make it to the battlefield," Simpson is recorded saying May 29, 2009. "It's time to roll."
In court, prosecutors presented only 17 minutes and 31 seconds during Simpson's trial.
"I have to say that I felt like these charges were completely trumped up, that they were just trying to cover up what had been a very long and expensive investigation and they just couldn't leave without some sort of charges," Simpson's attorney Kristina Sitton said.
Sitton described Simpson as so devout that he would sometimes interrupt their legal meetings so he could pray. She said she had no indication that he was capable of violence and assumed he just "snapped."
2 cities investigating
Sunday night, the police and FBI agents in Phoenix searched the apartment believed to be Simpson's, with much of the Autumn Ridge apartment complex cordoned off. At the same time, FBI agents and technicians were aiding the police in Garland, a city just outside Dallas, in their investigation.
The two men, wearing body armor, drove up to the event center in Garland about 6:50 p.m. Sunday, stepped out of their car holding assault rifles, and began shooting, wounding a security guard, the police said.
The shooting took place outside the Curtis Culwell Center at an event organized by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a New York-based group that also uses the name Stop Islamization of America. The event included a contest for the best caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, with a $10,000 top prize.
Officials did not give a motive for the attack, but drawings of the prophet are considered offensive in most interpretations of Islam. In January, gunmen in Paris attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical newspaper known for printing caricatures of the prophet, killing 12 people.
Harn said the police and organizers had planned for months for the heavy security around the event, which about 200 people attended, and that organizers paid $10,000 for added protection. Security included uniformed Garland police and school district officers, SWAT team and bomb squad officers, and representatives of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Geert Wilders, an anti-Islam leader in the Netherlands for the Party for Freedom, attended the event and delivered a speech. After the attack, he wrote "never surrender to terrorism!" in a Twitter post.
Pamela Geller, an organizer of the event who runs a website that attacks Islam, said the group decided to hold the event in the Curtis Culwell Center because members had heard that a Muslim group had a conference in the same room after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office.
Geller described Sunday's event as pro-free speech and said Muslims had become a "special class" that Americans were no longer allowed to offend.
Harn said the two gunmen stopped their car near the center's west parking lot entrance, which was blocked by a police car, as the event was drawing to a close. In the police car were a Garland police traffic officer and a Garland Independent School District security officer, who was unarmed. The officers got out of their car.
"Two men exited the dark color sedan, both of them had assault rifles, and came around the back of the car and started shooting at the police car," Harn said. He said officers from around the center converged on the scene within seconds, but by then the traffic officer had already killed the gunmen, whose bodies were still on the pavement beside their car well into the day Monday.
Harn said the police officer, whom he did not name, returned fire with his pistol, killing both gunmen.
"He did a very good job and probably saved lives," Harn said at a news conference Monday.
The school district said in a statement that its security officer, Bruce Joiner, was shot in the ankle and taken to a hospital. He was later released.
The police, fearing that the gunmen's car might contain an explosive device, evacuated not only the center, but also a nearby Hyatt hotel and several stores and other businesses. They used small explosive charges to open the car trunk and detonate several suspicious objects before concluding that there was no bomb.
In Phoenix, people living in the Autumn Ridge complex were roused around midnight by the police knocking on their doors, ordering residents to evacuate. Cheryl Klein said she and her wife, Cherielle Rice, stepped out of their apartment to find the area swarmed by officers in SWAT gear with assault rifles.
The Phoenix police, Homeland Security agents and FBI agents entered Simpson's apartment about 3 a.m. local time and allowed residents back into their homes about 4:30 a.m.
Information for this article was contributed by Manny Fernandez, Richard Perez-Pena, Michael S. Schmidt, Fernanda Santos and Liam Stack of The New York Times; and by Eileen Sullivan, Eric Tucker, Ryan Van Velzer, Brian Skoloff, Paul Davenport and Jamie Stengle of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/05/2015