FBI officials told reporters they are investigating whether Omar Mateen had previously visited Orlando’s gay nightclub Pulse and if he communicated with its patrons on a gay dating app before early Sunday morning, when he shot more than 100 people in the establishment. At least four witnesses told the Orlando Sentinel they recognized Mateen from the venue, where they said he often sat alone and drank in a corner before becoming belligerent. Sometimes, they said, he’d angrily talk about his family. A former classmate of his police academy class came forward alleging that Mateen once asked him out and that they and others often visited gay nightclubs together. The FBI told USA Today it was unclear whether Mateen’s visits served as attempts to scout the gay nightclub as a target or whether he was a patron.
Cord Cedeno and Chris Callen are other Pulse customers who told the Sentinel they had seen Mateen in the nightclub. Callen said he had witnessed violent outbursts by Mateen. "It was definitely him. He'd come in for years, and people knew him," Cedeno said.
Many in the Orlando gay community are now coming forward to share similar stories of seeing Mateen at clubs for the past decade or speaking to him on hookup apps.
The former male classmate of Mateen who was once asked out by the mass-murderer told the Palm Beach Post that he would hang out with gunman alone and in groups, and that they went to gay clubs together during that year.
The man, who did not wish to be named, was a classmate of Mateen's in 2006 when they both attended the Indian River Community College police academy.
He also said that refused Mateen's romantic advances at the time.
'He just wanted to fit in and no one liked him,' he said. 'He was always socially awkward.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3639961/Orlando-terrorist-went-gay-club-Pulse-dozen-times-got-drunk-belligerent-talked-wife-kid-massacring-49-people-there.html#ixzz4BiIMwhsZ
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Late Monday came word that Mateen's wife, Noor Zahi Salman, was not cooperating with authorities, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Investigators want to ask if she knew about his plans in advance or helped him scout out targets.
The official said they have talked extensively with Mateen's ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, who told reporters Sunday that the gunman was bi-polar and sometimes violent.
Nothing in Mateen's background prohibited him from legally buying those guns.
 |
| FBI Director James Comey |
He came to the F.B.I.’s attention in 2013, when some of his co-workers reported that he had made inflammatory comments claiming connections to overseas terrorists, and saying he hoped that the F.B.I. would raid his family’s home so that he could become a martyr.
The F.B.I. opened an investigation and put Omar Mateen on a terrorist watch list for nearly a year.
James Comey, the F.B.I. director, said during a news conference on Monday that agents used various methods to investigate Mr. Mateen, including sending an undercover informant who made contact with the suspect, wiretapping his conversations and scrutinizing his personal and financial records.
They also sought help from Saudi intelligence officials to learn more about his trips to the kingdom in 2011 and 2012 for the Umrah, a sacred pilgrimage to Mecca made by Muslims. More than 11,000 Americans make pilgrimages to Mecca each year, and Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. found no “derogatory” information about his trips.
During interviews with F.B.I. agents, according to Mr. Comey, Mr. Mateen said he had made the incendiary remarks “in anger” because his co-workers had ridiculed his Muslim background and he wanted to scare them. The F.B.I. closed its investigation and took him off the terrorist watch list.
But two months later, in July 2014, his name resurfaced in connection with the young man from coastal Florida, Moner Mohammad Abusalha, who had traveled to Syria and carried out the suicide bombing at the hilltop restaurant. During the course of that investigation, F.B.I. agents learned that the two men had attended the same mosque and knew each other “casually,” Mr. Comey said.
The F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Mateen a third time, but determined that his ties to the suicide bomber were not significant. The bureau had no further contact with Mr. Mateen.
Mr. Comey defended the work of his agents, although the bureau’s handling of the case is likely to be the subject of scrutiny and criticism in the coming weeks.
Still, cases such as these rankle F.B.I. counterterrorism agents, who believe they draw criticism for any choices they make — either for leaving cases open too long, or for closing cases that don’t seem to have enough evidence.
Don Borelli, a retired F.B.I. counterterrorism supervisor in New York, said there was a danger in criticizing agents who close investigations for lack of evidence. “Can we allow people’s futures to be affected if there is no proven basis for it? That’s the flip side to all this,” he said.
-----
-----
LINDA STASI, DAILY NEWS
[Ms. Stasi is quickly becoming the sharpest, most biting social critic in America. Here she nails both radical Islam and radical American fundamentalism--Esco]
Make no mistake, and say it loud: Radical Islamic terrorism killed 49 innocent Americans and wounded 53 more early Sunday morning at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
And it was radical Islamic terrorism that put unbound hatred into the heart of gunslinging mass murderer Omar Mateen.
But what self self-serving politicians and haters aren’t saying aloud is that what drove this sociopath to mass murder was homophobia – of the self-loathing kind; of the kind practiced in radical Islam-controlled countries.
No, this slaughter wasn’t jihad by a true believer, or by a foreign terrorist, but by an American-born, shamed closeted gay Muslim. A man who was taught by his radical, hate-filled Islamist father to despise himself and hide himself; and by extension to rage at everyone who is free in a free society to explore their sexuality.
Mateen’s murderous rage wasn’t so much about allegiance to ISIS, as it was about Islamic-forbidden sex. Because Mateen had to hide his homosexuality — he even married two women, one of whom he beat — he knew he would never be free to explore his true nature without disgrace. So he killed others in the name of ISIS to cover his shame. It was better to claim he was killing for the worst humans on earth, than to admit to a sexual preference that ISIS would have butchered him for it anyway?
Mateen’s 911 call in the middle of the carnage to declare his allegiance to ISIS seemed merely a play to the media and to his father to show he wasn’t in a gay club because he was gay but because he was a good Muslim man out to destroy homosexuality. Mateen’s radical father, Sediqque Mir Mateen, even said after the slaughter: “God will punish those involved in homosexuality” — a statement he later tried to back away from).
“There is no way (my son) was homosexual, he was not brought up that way. ... I will not have it. He was not gay.” This despite the proof that his son frequented the club as well as gay dating sites.
The shame for Mateen senior doesn’t lie in raising a sociopathic, wife-beating, mass murdering Muslim. It lies in raising a gay one.
 |
| Sacramento pastor Roger Jimenez celebrated the massacre at a Florida gay club, calling the victims "pedophiles." |
-----
Make no mistake, it’s not just radical Islamists that are filled with murderous, terrorist hatred for homosexuals. It can reside within our clergy and politicians, too.
Take California pastor Roger Jimenez, who preached from the pulpit at Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento, Calif., on Sunday after the slaughter in Orlando: “The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. ... I’m kind of upset he didn’t finish the job because these people are predators.”
And you, sir, are a predator for Satan disguised as a follower of Jesus.