After
hearing a rapid-fire series of reports involving global terrorism and police
brutality, people seemed to have forgotten the Orlando Shooting. It has only been a month since 49 people died
and 53 were injured at The Pulse nightclub.
Before the media accelerated its speeding conveyor belt of tragedies,
people were confused about the perpetrator’s motives. Why would a gay man commit mass murder at a
gay nightclub? Was the perpetrator, Omar
Mateen, a homophobic psychopath or a repenting gay jihadist?
By
providing a full account of the tragedy, the events leading up to the incident,
the aftermath, and an examination of Mateen’s duplicitous lifestyle, that
question could be answered more objectively.
At the end, I give my analysis with the intention to add perspective on
the crime and the mindset of Omar Mateen.
Omar Mateen’s life leading up to the fatal day
In 1986, Omar Mateen was born in
New York. His parents were Afghan
immigrants. The family moved to Fort
Pierce, Florida, which is about 120 miles southeast of Orlando.
Before going down the morbid path as
a jihadist, Omar originally wanted to become a police officer. During his youth, he took part in a
citizen-ride-along in a patrol car. His
social media pictures show him wearing an NYPD shirt that he personally
bought. His education showed how serious
he was about this career path. He
graduated from Indian River Community College with an Associate’s Degree in
Criminal Justice.
To add to his degree, Mateen tried
to gain admission into a police academy, according to his first wife. In preparation for his security career,
Mateen obtained a state security guard license enabling him to carry a firearm.
In 2006, Mateen worked in the state
prison, Martin Correctional Institution, in Indiantown for six months and then he
was terminated. Then in 2007, he started
working for G4S Security as an armed security officer. G4S first assigned Mateen to work in the St.
Lucie County Courthouse in Fort Pierce.
This assignment ended due to the first FBI investigation against him, as
will be discussed in the upcoming paragraphs.
G4S transferred him to a gated retirement community, which was his last
post before his death.
Two marriages
Omar Mateen met an Uzbekistani
woman, Sitora Yusufiy, online. In 2009,
they got married in Fort Pierce. This
marriage only lasted four months, because Mateen became domestically
violent. He started off as a “normal
husband,” but soon he was mentally unstable and beat Yusufiy repeatedly. She first told the Washington Post, “He would
just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or
something like that.” During his
outbursts, he would “express hatred towards everything.”
Yusufiy said he had a history of
steroids and was bipolar. Mateen was not
formally diagnosed for bipolar disorder, and steroid-induced psychosis could
factor into his outbursts. He regularly
worked out at a gym, a likely reason for the steroids. He also had a handgun at home – guns and
domestic violence are a lethal combination.
After four months, Yusufiy’s parents rescued her from the house. The divorce took so long because the split
couple lived in different parts of the country.
The divorce was finalized in 2011.
Mateen met Noor Salman online
and remarried in September 2011.
Together they had a son, who is now three years old. Last April, they went to Walt Disney
World. Salman claimed she tried to
dissuade Mateen from carrying out the attack.
The week before the
incident
On June 4, Mateen purchased a .223
Sig Sauer MCX assault rifle. The next
day, June 5, he purchased a Glock 17, a 9mm caliber handgun. Both firearms were legally purchased from the
St. Lucie Shooting Center. The owner,
Edward Henson, hardly remembered this quiet customer. On a different date, Noor Mateen was present
when he purchased ammunition and a holster.
Although Mateen beat his first
wife, there was no filed report of domestic violence. He abused steroids, but there was no record
of it. He may or may not have had
bipolar disorder, but a judge never ruled him Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity
(NGRI) for a crime. He was cleared from
the FBI watch list. He was never
convicted of a felony, nor did he have pending felony charges. He was not a fugitive. He was not an illegal alien. He was not dishonorably discharged from the
military. This is how Omar Mateen passed
the background check and legally obtained his murder weapons.
June 12, 2016: The
Pulse Nightclub Shooting
Mateen rented a car and drove to
Orlando to carry out his attack. Once
there, he ran into an online acquaintance.
Kevin West had only messaged him on Jack’d, but he never met Mateen in
person until the fateful day. West saw
Mateen crossing the street, walking directly past him. West said, “Hey.” Mateen turned and said, “Hey” back and nodded. West saw Mateen enter the Pulse around 1am. That night, there were over 300 people inside
The Pulse nightclub at a Latin themed event.
Shortly before the attack, Mateen
made a 911 call in which he pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS). According to a CIA deputy, this is
significant because ISIL tells its followers that they must pledge bayat, an act of pledging allegiance to
IS before dying in jihad.
At 2:02am, Omar Mateen returned to
the club with the .223 Sig Sauer assault rifle, a handgun, and an
explosive. An off-duty police officer
saw him and exchanged fire with him. Mateen
retreated inside the Pulse, and started spraying bullets.
A surviving patron, Jon Alamo,
said, “I heard 20, 40, 50 shots.” The
stream of gunshots went on long enough that it “could have lasted a whole
song,” according to another patron, Christopher Hansen At 2:09am, a post on The Pulse’s official
Facebook page read, “Everyone get out of pulse and keep running.” In the midst of fatal chaos, fleeing was
difficult, since there was “no clear exit sign.”
In the course of this three hour
siege, over 100 police officers surrounded the Pulse. People lucky enough to still be breathing dialed
911. A few brave officers went inside
and the second gun battle made Mateen retreat into the bathroom, toward the
back of the club. There were at least 15
people hiding in that bathroom. Mateen
took them hostage, and told the police that he had explosives. One female survivor hid under dead bodies to
protect herself.
With Mateen in the back of the
building, the police rescued dozens of people from the club and bar area. In the heat of a terrorist attack, the saved
were uncounted at this point.
It was 30 minutes into the
attack. Mateen spoke to a 911 dispatcher
twice while he held people hostage in the bathroom. The first 911 call lasted 50 seconds; Mateen
spoke Arabic several times, praising God and pledging allegiance to IS. He admitted, “I’m in Orlando. I did the shootings.”
Mateen spoke with Orlando police’s
Crisis Negotiation Team three times after that 50-second 911 call. Mateen identified himself as an “Islamic
soldier” and told the negotiator to “tell America to stop bombing Syria and
Iraq” and that was why he was “out here right now.” He went on to say, “There is some vehicle
outside that has some bombs, just to let you know. You people are gonna get it and I’m gonna
ignite it if they try to do anything stupid.”
Then he said he had a vest, “used in France.” His last haunting statement was, “In the next
few days, you’re going to see more of this type of action going on.” Then he hung up.
The other calls were not disclosed,
but the survivors had their testimonies.
They heard Mateen demand America to, “Stop bombing ISIS in Syria.” Someone playing dead on the bathroom floor
heard, “Stop killing ISIS!” Another
survivor, Patience Carter heard him say, “Stop bombing my country,” which most
likely meant Afghanistan since his parents emigrated from there.
According to the police, Mateen
remained “cool and calm” during the negotiations. In the standoff, Mateen pledged allegiance to
IS, mentioned the Paris attacks, and supported the Boston Marathon bombers, who
were inspired by Al-Qaeda and the Al-Nusra suicide bomber, Moner Abusalha. Mateen
told the 911 operator that Abusalha had partially inspired his attack. He also claimed he was committing this
assault for the leader of ISIL, a curious conflict in statements; IS and
Al-Nusra are enemies. At some point,
Mateen made a personal phone call, but that recipient is unknown.
Omar Mateen was a dumb amateur at
keeping hostages. The hostages used
their cellphones to text and call friends and relatives, but they also
contacted the police. This brought the
need for the SWAT team. Since Mateen
isolated himself to the bathroom, the police were able to secure the building
to prepare to blast through the bathroom’s external wall with explosives.
While that was underway, the police
removed an air conditioning unit from a dressing room window at 4:21am. Then they helped some victims escape, some of
whom told the police that terrorist was going to force victims to wear bomb
vests within the next 15 minutes. Later,
the police would search and find no vests.
At 5am, the police detonated two
explosives, knocking holes in the building.
An armored SWAT vehicle drove inside.
Eleven officers entered, and there was a final exchange of bullets. One of Mateen’s shots hit an officer’s Kevlar
helmet, which saved the officer’s life.
Soon Mateen was shot dead.
A total of 50 people died,
including the perpetrator, and 53 wounded people were taken to the Orlando
Health Hospital. The victims ranged from
18 to 50 years old. By 11pm, all the
victims were removed from The Pulse.
The Aftermath
The attack affected more than just
the LGBT community. Thousands gathered
at the candlelight vigil in Orlando. The
Muslim community was angered, too. Imam
Muhammad Musri from the Islamic Society of Central Florida and Imam Tariq
Rasheed from the Islamic Center in Orlando openly condemned the attack. Democrats called for more gun control, noting
that we don’t need any more lists of innocent people dying. Republicans want to keep their guns to
protect themselves from the next Omar Mateen.
It didn’t matter what political affiliation you had, what sexual
orientation you were, or what religion you believed in or if you were religious
at all – the Orlando Pulse Nightclub Shooting struck a sad chord with everyone.
Surviving families still awaited
news on the injured. On June 20th, Dr.
Cheatham from Orlando Health said that 27 of the 44 patients were still being
treated. Out of the 27, six were
“critically ill.” Even Mateen’s
neighbors had to be protected. The
police evacuated 200 residents from Mateen’s apartment complex, in case there
were explosives in Mateen’s unit. The
drama defused but didn’t end quickly.
Patience Carter told BBC News, “The guilt of being alive is heavy.”
IS claims
responsibility
ISIL’s news station, Amaq News,
stated that an “ISIS fighter” was responsible.
ISIL’s radio station also broadcasted that ISIL took responsibility for
the mass shooting. It could mean that
ISIL is just taking credit for inspiring a wannabe ISIL member or they could
have been directly involved. It’s most
likely the former, although ISIL did implore its members to strike the West
during Ramadan, which started a week before the attack.
If it’s only the former, then it
would count as domestic terrorism only.
Domestic terrorism is like a benign tumor, being restricted to one
place, and international terrorism is like a malignant tumor, which can fester
in cells all over.
The Mateen family’s
reactions
Mateen’s second wife, Noor Zahi
Salman, drew suspicion from the media when she did not initially cooperate with
the authorities. When investigators
showed her Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) archives of her going places with her
husband around Orlando, she agreed to talk.
She answered questions while being polygraphed.
Contrary to immediate accusations,
Salman’s special education teacher from Crockett, California came forward,
saying Salman would be too incompetent to be an accomplice in this crime. During middle school, Noor Salman had all special
ed classes. The teacher going by only
her first name, Susan, said, “Noor had difficulty with retention, she had
difficulty with conceptualization, understanding, all challenges to her. … She
tried hard. She was very sweet.” Susan also said, “She doesn’t understand
‘cause and effect.’” Perhaps Salman
thought she wouldn’t be implicated in her husband’s terrorism? Salman tried to talk him out of the attack,
so could she have called the police – or the idea did not come to mind? Was she afraid if she contacted the
authorities that Mateen would harm her?
Maybe she attempted to dissuade him earlier, and the argument did not
occur right before the attack. Maybe she
thought she convinced him enough and he just kept silent?
Omar’s father, Seddique Mateen,
said that he didn’t know if Salman was involved in the attack. He also asserted that his son was not gay,
but Yusufiy said that he once mocked Omar for his sexual orientation. Yusufiy believed her ex-husband was gay. The second wife, Salman, knew that he
frequented nightclubs before their relationship but she didn’t know they were
gay ones.
The saddest family reaction came
from Mateen’s son, who still did not understand his father was dead. Seddique was talking on the phone to his
three-year-old grandson, who asked to talk to father.
Two Sides of the Same Criminal
“If he was gay, why would he do
something like this?” was his father’s reaction. It seems illogical for a gay man to commit a
massacre in a gay nightclub. One of
Seddique’s first reactions was that homosexuality was punishable by God, which
echoes modern Islam’s condemnation as a whole.
Interesting to note is that homosexuality was accepted in Islam until
the 19th century. There are still five
Islamic nations* that don’t criminalize homosexuality, and they were not
colonized by the British. For those
colonized, Muslim and Hindu conservatives had adopted the Victorian values.
*Mali,
Jordan, Indonesia, Turkey, and Albania.
A few weeks before the shooting,
Seddique said his son became angry when he witnessed two men kissing in
Miami. However, Omar Mateen went to gay
nightclubs and used Jack’d, a gay messaging app, to pick up men. With contradictory statements and actions,
it’s hard to discern Mateen’s true identity – a gay Muslim repenting via
violent jihad or a terrorist infiltrating a club in order to plot. Let’s examine both of Mateen’s histories: his
gay side/charade and his radical Islamic side.
Then I will give my analysis.
Mateen’s Alleged Gay
Side
In 2006, while attending Indian
River Community College, Mateen and his classmates would go to gay nightclubs
located on Treasure Coast and West Palm Beach.
The clubs included Kashmir Night Club (West Palm Beach), Byrd Cage (Port
St. Lucie), Cold Keg (Melbourne), and Rebar (Port St. Lucie).
Mateen tried to pick up one of his
male classmates who shared a police academy class with him. The classmate did not want to be named. Mateen asked (Unnamed) if he was gay, and (Unnamed)
denied even though he was gay. Mateen
added that, “Well if you were gay, you would be my type.” (Unnamed) believed that Mateen, “just wanted
to fit in and no one liked him. He was
always socially awkward.” Mateen was gay
but more reserved about it.
Omar Mateen was a regular at the
Pulse, according to a 71-year-old patron, Jim Van Horn. He said, “He was trying to pick up
people. Men.” Another patron, Ty Smith – aka Aries, said he
saw Mateen at least 12 times at Pulse.
Contrary to what Salman believed, Mateen was still visiting clubs after
being married. Aries said Mateen would
talk about his father, and mentioned he had a wife and child.
At the Pulse, Mateen was known to
sit in a corner alone and drink, often becoming “loud and belligerent,” as Ty
Smith said. Chris Callen, a patron,
witnessed him having violent outbursts, and the head of security at Pulse,
Estella Peterkin, had to remove him from the nightclub on multiple
occasions. One time Mateen pulled a
knife on a friend for telling a religious joke.
FBI Investigations
The
first time Mateen was under FBI investigation was in 2013, lasting 10
months. While working at the St. Lucie
County Sheriff’s Office, Mateen made “inflammatory comments” to his
coworkers. He claimed to be tied to IS,
have family connections to Al-Qaeda, and that he was a member of
Hezbollah. All three of these terrorist
organizations are at odds with each other.
The FBI interviewed Mateen twice, and Mateen said these comments were
out of anger because he felt his coworkers were discriminating against
him. Regardless of the investigation’s
null outcome, Mateen’s actions still resulted in his supervisor requesting
Mateen to be transferred out of the courthouse.
The second investigation
transpired the following year, 2014.
Mateen was interviewed because a suicide bomber attended the same mosque
as him. Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha was a jihadist
for Jabhat al-Nusra. He was a
Palestinian American from Vero Beach, Florida.
On May 24, 2014, at the age of 22, he traveled to Syria, and drove a
truck full of explosives into a government outpost. There, he detonated and took his own
life. Since the first investigation, the
FBI kept files on Mateen, and they wanted to know if there was any connection
other than attending the same mosque, Islamic Center of Fort Pierce. Mateen went to that mosque for almost a
decade.
While
it may seem hardly warranted to accuse someone just for being in the same room
as a terrorist, Mateen did state in one of the 911 calls that Abu-Salha had
partially inspired his attack on the Pulse. Members of the Islamic Center in Fort Pierce said Mateen did not show signs of radicalism. The Imam, Syed Shafeeq Rahman, described Mateen as quiet, soft spoken, and hardly interacted with anyone at the mosque. In an interview with Reuters, Rahman said, "He hardly had any friends. ... He would come with his little son at night to pray, and after he would leave."
Once
Mateen was married and had his son, he stopped being interested in radical
Islam. The FBI determined this notion
from only one source.
Post-investigation
hostility
Even after two investigations,
Mateen was vocal at work about his negative views on groups of people. One coworker, Daniel Gilroy, could not
tolerate him enough to quit. Gilroy said
Mateen “had a low regard for women,” and “you could hear him yelling and
cursing” in the guard house. He would
have outbursts about women, homosexuals, and black people. Despite being misogynistic, Mateen would hit
on women in the gated community. Maybe
it was to intimidate them or appear to be friendly toward women?
Gilroy just wanted to report for
work, relieve Mateen, and for Mateen to leave.
Security guards generally leave after the next guard comes in for their
shift. When Gilroy couldn’t take
Mateen’s hateful rhetoric anymore, he said, “I do not share your views. You come in at 3, I leave at 3. Let’s just keep it at that.”
Outside of work, Mateen text
harassed him enough that Gilroy’s girlfriend thought he was cheating with a
man. He had to convince her that that
wasn’t the case. One of Mateen’s texts
read, “Why aren’t you contacting me? You
are betraying me.” The rest were
threatening enough to make Gilroy’s girlfriend cry.
Conflicting
Allegiances
According
to the FBI director, James Comey, Omar Mateen claimed to be linked to IS, Al-Qaeda,
and Hezbollah, all within a 3-year timeframe.
Al-Qaeda is opposition with Hezbollah and IS. IS used to be part of the Al-Qaeda network,
and later Al-Qaeda denounced them, and then they separated.
Given
his conflicting allegiances, it would seem like Mateen was too oblivious to be
a real jihadist with connections.
Claiming to be in both Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah is analogous to claiming
association with the Bloods and the Crips – and fighting on both sides. However, it’s not as ludicrous as it seems. According to Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a
counterterrorism analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “It’s
not unusual for a jihadist at Mateen’s level to have conflicting sympathies for
different terror groups,” and “On a foot-soldier level, you actually get less
hostility toward other militant groups.”
Since Mateen was a low level supporter with no contact with ISIL leaders
or any terrorist group, he did not deal with the competitive tensions that
jihadists have between clashing organizations.
Inversely, general support for all radical Islam groups wins their favor
in return, since they all perceive to have won a point. That part is my take, anyway.
My Analysis
People
debate over whether or not Omar Mateen was a homophobic maniac or a shamefully
gay radical Muslim waging jihad to compensate for his homosexuality. It seems trivial to contemplate a killer’s
sexual orientation when 49 people died. Though,
there is a point in identifying sexuality in crimes when gathering information.
In
profiling, a perpetrator’s sexual orientation is classified as Non-Criminal
Identifying Information (NCII). The
reason for this is that some traits and behaviors are characteristic of an
individual but not their suspected crime.
For instance, if a fugitive was responsible for a bank robbery, the
facts that he is bisexual, knows Spanish, and frequents billiard halls are
helpful for citizens to identify him from a wanted post – but have nothing to
do with a bank robbery. However in this
case, the crime itself was linked to sexuality, since the victims were LGBT,
and the perpetrator sported a gay lifestyle whether it was honest or
masqueraded.
I
don’t believe Omar Mateen was ever gay, and that he used that façade to gain
trust, and examine potential targets for his attack. That was my immediate reaction to his Pulse
patronage, which parallels to Seddique Mateen’s reasoning, saying that his son
was scouting out the area in order to plan the massacre.
In order to commit a crime of this
level, knowing the layout of the building is important. He knew where the exits were, where the
bathrooms were, where to corner these people – and who was likely or capable of
subduing him. Conservatives chant that
“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” but an
armed off-duty police officer was present and tried to stop him and
unfortunately failed.
Surveilling security was also crucial
in plotting. Omar’s innocuous family
outing to Disney World was deemed suspicious as scoping a possible target. Perhaps he observed that security was tighter
at Disney World, and the small security team at the Pulse was more vulnerable. The worst that ever happened to Mateen was
being escorted out of the club.
If the people saw him as a regular
patron, then they wouldn’t suspect him of being a homophobe, especially not a
homophobic mass murderer.
Ten years is a long charade, but
he showed his true feelings in his tirades at work. Feigning homosexuality wins the trust of gay
would-be victims, but having bigoted outbursts at work would not benefit
Mateen. So, he was more likely
expressing his pent up tension that he repressed during his gay act.
At
the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, he had a reputation of being “very
aggressive,” and that he was not friends with anyone in the mosque. It is possible that his aggressive nature
repelled other people, but it also means he probably was not close with the
suicide bomber, Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha.
Curious
to note were his haunting words in the 911 call, “In the next few days, you’re
going to see more of this type of action going on.” For a jihadist with no links to terrorist
organizations, it seems coincidental that five major attacks involving Islamic
extremists occurred after the Orlando shooting.
There were bombings in the Istanbul airport (June 28), and Baghdad (July
3). There was a hostage situation and
massacre in a Dhaka, Bangladesh café (July 3), and a bombing at the Medina holy
site in Saudi Arabia (July 5). The most recent
attack involved a truck plowing down crowds in Nice, France (July 14). In that phone call, Mateen predicted a few
days, but weeks would be more fitting. There
is probably no link between Mateen’s statement and the sequence of events,
because Mateen was a wannabe operative, but that is underestimation - a type of
intelligence failure. Any time terrorists
succeed, intelligence failure is indicated.
If authoritative powers can analyze each attack and how they are linked,
there is hope to prevent future incidents.
©2016 Caroline Friehs
Originally posted on July 17, 2016
Last updated upon blog renovation completion.
Last updated upon blog renovation completion.
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