The new tapes are between Omar Mateen, the gunman who killed 49 people at the club, and a hostage negotiator.
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“What’s going on is that I feel the pain of people getting killed in Syria and Iraq and all over the Muslim”, Mateen said in the transcripts.
The first phone call comes at 2:35 a.m., when the shooter says “this is Mateen”.
“He was never sexually interested”, she says.
He also told the police negotiator that he had planted bombs in a vehicle outside the gay nightclub.
But then Mateen retracted his claim, instead saying the vest was “like, you know, to go out to a wedding”. In their last conversation at 3:25 a.m., the negotiator tells Mateen to come outside without any weapons, but Mateen doesn’t reply.
Mateen: You’re annoying me with these phone calls and I don’t really appreciate it. Later, he said American bomb sniffing dogs couldn’t smell them.
In another call negotiation minutes later, the Orlando police officer called Mateen by his first name.
Negotiator: The air strikes need to stop.
Waheeb gained recognition for circulating violent videos online. The negotiator asked if Mateen, armed with a Sig Sauer MCX assault rifle and a glock semiautomatic handgun, had been injured.
Investigators have said Mateen was not formally linked to the Islamic State but was a “lone wolf” attacker – a person without direct ties to a formal terrorist organization, but is radicalized and attacks alone. Mateen responded with, “no”.
Police have released the calls following demands from the United States public for more information about the events that took place during the three-hour siege.
Mateen repeatedly tried to brush off the negotiator, who kept calling him to maintain communication in an attempt to end the standoff.
He added: “Call me Mujahideen, call me the Soldier of God”.
Mateen hung up on the negotiator, but the negotiator called back.
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The city was ordered by a state court judge to release any calls that did not fall under an exemption in state public records law. The city did not release the audio of these calls and is now in a legal battle with media organizations to release all the 911 calls made on the day 49 people died and 53 others were injured. Twenty other 911 calls have previously been released but did not include voices of people speaking from inside the club. When the negotiator asked, “can you tell me where you are right now so I can you get some help?”.
