FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday that the Minnesota man who stabbed 10 people inside a St. Cloud shopping mall earlier this month was inspired in some way by a foreign terrorist group.
"It does look like at least in part [Dahir Adan] was motivated by some sort of inspiration from radical Islamic groups," Comey told the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C. "Which groups, and how, we're not sure of yet."
Within hours of Adan's Sept. 17 attack at the Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud, an arm of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed credit for the violence, using language nearly identical to claims in previous attacks.
But Comey said the claim alone was not enough for the FBI to link Adan's actions to ISIL.
"They claim responsibility for any savagery they can get their name on," he said.
Comey said the FBI is analyzing Adan's "entire electronic record and history of all of his associations" to try to learn more about the motivation behind his attack.
A spokesman for the Minneapolis office of the FBI declined to comment further because the case remains "a very active investigation."
Adan, 20, was fatally shot by an off-duty police officer during the rampage. During the attack, Adan referred to Allah and asked at least one victim whether they were Muslim, according to St. Cloud Police Chief William Blair Anderson.