Transcripts revealing how Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen demanded an end to United States airstrikes in Iraq and Syria while talking to police negotiators on the night he killed 49 people have been revealed.
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The gunman responsible for the worst mass shooting in USA history told a police negotiator during a standoff at an Orlando nightclub that the United States needed to stop bombing Syria and Iraq, according to a transcript of the phone conversation released Friday.
He told police: “You have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq”. Orlando is also fighting the release of about 28 minutes of a conversation between Mateen and a crisis-negotiating team.
After he pledged allegiance, the negotiator responded: “I completely get what you’re saying”.
“I want to let you know I’m in Orlando and I did the shooting”, he said.
Later in the call Mateen refers to his “homeboy” Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers, and calls him a “soldier of God”.
Mateen, a NY native of Afghan descent, killed 49 people in his rampage before being gunned down by police. When the police officer on the other end of the line asks if he’s done something about it, Mateen replies, “Yes I have…”
Since the massacre in June, the city sought to block some two dozen media groups including The Associated Press from obtaining the government records.
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Earlier this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the mass shooting, said that withholding the records was no longer necessary to its probe.
