ORLANDO NIGHT CLUB ATTACK BY ‘KNOWN WOLF’ TERRORIST PREVIOUSLY INVESTIGATED BY FBI:
Omar Mateen of Port Saint Lucie, Florida, came to the attention of federal authorities twice prior to being identified as the gunman in the Orlando nightclub mass shooting, a senior law enforcement source told The Daily Beast.
Mateen 53 people and shot more than 100 in total at the Pulse gay nightclub early Sunday morning, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
The senior law enforcement source reports that Mateen became a person of interest in 2013 and again in 2014. The Federal Bureau of Investigation at one point opened an investigation into Mateen but subsequently closed the case when it produced nothing that appeared to warrant further investigation.
“He’s a known quantity,” the source said. “He’s been on the radar before.”
Mateen was a U.S. citizen; his parents are from Afghanistan, CBS News reports.
“The FBI is already circling the wagons that Marteen was just ‘one of hundreds’ of ISIS,’ Patrick Poole adds. “This is not the first time that the gay community has been targeted by would-be jihadists. In fact, an imam speaking in Orlando in April said that killing gays according to Islamic law should be done ‘out of compassion.’”
Read the whole thing.
Related: “This appears to be the voter data on the terrorist (yes, he’s a registered Democrat).”
More: Ex-wife of suspected Orlando shooter: “He was not a stable person. He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”