A federal grand jury has reportedly been convened and Salman could be charged today.
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Omar Mateen was even a regular at Pulse, the site of his massacre, according to several witnesses, and bumped into a man with whom he had been exchanging messages outside the club just before the shooting. Mateen had asked him out, the classmate, who did not want to be named, told local television in Orlando. In the past few days, she also told officials she’d once tried to talk him out of the attack. There are no police records of Salman contacting authorities to warn them of anything.
Responding to reports that his son’s wife drove him to scout locations, Mr Mateen said that he did not think that his daughter-in-law was an accomplice to the attack.
But a US official with knowledge of the situation told CBS News that club-goers have told investigators that Mateen had been at the club prior to the shooting.
Mateen first came on the FBI’s radar in 2013 when he made “inflammatory comments to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties”, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ronald Hopper said. “I heard the news that you heard…to me that is wrong, I didn’t see it”.
The FBI said Monday it was “highly confident” that Mateen had been self-radicalized by reading extremist propaganda online.
The footage appears in the 2012 award-winning documentary The Big Fix, and shows Mateen speaking with a reporter while contracted to the security company G4S.
Jim Van Horn, 71, told The Associated Press that he saw Mateen repeatedly at the bar and talked to him once. “I guess that created some confusion between that, and there was definitely moments that he would express his intolerance to homosexuals”, she said Monday.
The Orlando Sentinel quoted one patron who said that Mateen would “go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent”. It’s unclear how much she knew at the time about his intentions.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama said Mateen appeared to have been “an angry, disturbed, unstable young man who became radicalised”.
“Based on what I know about my son…” Mateen, 29, was a USA citizen, born in NY of Afghan immigrant parents.
The test he took that month was held inside the St. Lucie Shooting Center in Port St. Lucie, Florida – the very same place where Mateen legally purchased the assault rifle and handgun he used in the Pulse bloodbath.
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He told police during a 911 call that he pledged allegiance to ISIS, the terror group that claimed responsibility for attacks in Paris and Brussels.
