Orlando mass murderer Omar Mateen cased out the inside of the gay night club he attacked hours before he opened fire there, and had purchased plane tickets for his family one day earlier, federal authorities revealed on Tuesday. But the Federal Bureau of Investigation had previously said Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and other organizations. He identified himself as an Islamic soldier, demanded to a crisis negotiator that the US “stop bombing” Syria and Iraq, warned of future violence in the coming days and at one point pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said. She had underwent an operation and was not recovering, NBC News reported.
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“The fact that this person was a Muslim, and also that he was a Muslim from my community and somebody that I knew – very, very, very disturbing”, Mailk told CBS News.
During the 50-second call with a dispatcher, Mateen “made murderous statements in a “chilling, calm and deliberate manner”, Ronald Hopper, FBI assistant special agent in charge in Orlando, said during a news conference”. Authorities are working to piece together Mateen’s life and the final days before the attack to determine a motive for one of the most deadly mass shootings in US history.
In one call, Mateen is heard calling himself an Islamic soldier and telling negotiators to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. “But he also claimed to pledge solidarity with the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing and solidarity with a Florida man who died as a suicide bomber in Syria for al-Nusra Front, a group in conflict with the so-called Islamic State”. Mateen had been interviewed by the FBI three times since 2013 as part of two separate investigations and placed on a terror watch list.
The US Senate Monday rejected proposals from both parties on Monday to keep extremists from acquiring guns, including one that was publicly supported by the Justice Department.
But Lynch is trying, she’s really trying, and she insisted on Tuesday that the killer’s motives might remain unknown amid the dead bodies, the Islamic invocations and the 9-1-1 transcripts.
Lynch said it was a “cruel irony” that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community – one defined nearly entirely by who they love – was so often a target of hate.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Tuesday described the Pulse nightclub massacre as “a shattering attack”. Investigators are still asking for anyone who had contact with Mateen to come forward, and are working to determine if his wife had knowledge of the plot.
Lynch’s meeting with first responders comes as Orlando police face continued questions about the response to the rampage. Burbano, who rushed to the aid of the injured, is now unable to sleep and struggling to understand why he was spared.
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According to the timeline and Orlando police Chief John Mina, that’s the last time shots were fired inside the club until almost three hours later when police used explosives to blow a hole in the club’s wall and an armored vehicle to enter the club. Lynch said “Let me say to our LGBT friends and family, particularly to anyone who might view this tragedy as an indication that their identities, that their essential selves might somehow be better left unexpressed or in the shadows, this Department of Justice and your country stands with you in the light”. “Those killings are on the suspect, on the suspect alone in my mind”.
