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“We know that this killing is upsetting to all Americans. Comey defended his agents’ work but said the agency would still conduct a review. Both investigations were closed without an arrest. The FBI also briefly investigated Mateen in 2014 on suspicion of watching videos by al-Qaida propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki and for attending a mosque in Florida with a man who later became a suicide bomber for Nusra Front in Syria, which also opposes Islamic State. Both groups oppose Islamic State and each other. The FBI previously investigated Mateen, a security guard, for 11 months for telling co-workers in 2013 that he had relatives connected to al-Qaida, the Sunni Muslim extremist group, while claiming he was a member of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, Comey said.
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Fifty-three more were wounded.īut Mateen, who was born in New York, had also expressed solidarity with the 2013 Boston bombers and an American suicide bomber who belonged to an al-Qaida affiliate in Syria opposed to Islamic State, Comey said. Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, Fla., was killed by a SWAT team and was among the 50 found dead at the site. On Sunday morning, Mateen told a 911 dispatcher that he was attacking Pulse on behalf of the leader of Islamic State, FBI Director James B. “I said, ‘That’s him,’ ” West said, and turned over his phone and Jack’d log-in information to the FBI, which still had the phone late today, he said.Īlso today, officials said Mateen appeared to have been radicalized by Islamic extremists on the internet but expressed sympathies with radical groups that violently oppose each other. “He told us he had a wife and child.”Īs soon as West saw photos released of Mateen after the shooting, he said, he drove to his local police station, where officers summoned FBI officials, who showed him a photo of Mateen on a computer screen.
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“We didn’t really talk to him a lot, but I remember him saying things about his dad at times,” Smith said. He saw Mateen at the club at least a dozen times, he said. “Sometimes he 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,” said Ty Smith, who also uses the name Aries. “I could tell by the eyes.”Īt least four regular customers of Pulse, the nightclub where the massacre took place, told the Orlando Sentinel today that they believed they had seen Mateen there before. I said, ‘Hey,’ and he turned and said, ‘Hey,’ ” and nodded his head, West said. West was dropping off a friend at the club when he noticed Mateen - whom he knew by sight but not by name - crossing the street wearing a dark cap and carrying a black cellphone about 1 a.m., an hour before the shooting. Kevin West, a regular at Pulse nightclub, said Omar Mateen messaged him on and off for a year before the shooting using the gay chat and dating app Jack’d.īut they never met - until early Sunday morning. » The gunman who attacked a Florida gay nightclub had attended the club before the attack and had used a gay dating and chat app, witnesses said.