Farrakhan-inspired attacker ‘not a terrorist,’ family says

Green’s family said that he may have suffered repeated head trauma during his years playing football.

By Josh Plank, World Israel News

The family of Noah Green, the Nation of Islam follower who rammed a car into U.S. Capitol Police on Friday before attacking them with a knife, said that he was “not a terrorist by any means,” the Washington Post reported Saturday.

The family released a statement saying that Green suffered from “depression and potential mental illness.”

The statement said that after graduating college, “he began to experience hardships among his peers” that may have stemmed from repeated head trauma during his years playing football.

Green’s family said they are “very shocked and upset” and “were just as taken aback as the rest of the nation from this horrific event.”

They also expressed “great sympathy” for Officer William Evans, who was killed in the attack.

Green was shot dead by police after he rammed a car into two officers at a barricade outside the U.S. Capitol and then ran at them wielding a knife during the Jewish festival of Passover and the Christian holiday of Good Friday.

Police have not categorized the incident as an act of domestic terrorism.

An anonymous senior law enforcement official told the New York Times that based on early evidence, investigators believe that Green was influenced by a combination of underlying mental health issues and a connection to an ideological cause that provided justification to commit violence.

On Green’s now-deleted Facebook page, he described himself as a “Follower of Farrakhan.”

On March 17, he posted a link to a sermon by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, titled “The Divine Destruction of America.”

“My faith is one of the only things that has been able to carry me through these times and my faith is centered on the belief in the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as Jesus, the Messiah, the final divine reminder in our midst,” Green said on Facebook.

“I consider him my spiritual father. Without his guidance, his word, and his teachings that I’ve picked up along the way, I would’ve been unable to continue,” he said.