Police cast net wide in search of Orlando gunman`s motive as wife faces charges` threat
The wife of the gunman in the Orlando gay nightclub massacre may face charges relating to accessory to murder, emerging reports reveal.
Jun 15, 2016
By Nick Hudson
The wife of the gunman in the Orlando gay nightclub massacre may face charges relating to accessory to murder, emerging reports reveal.
Prosecutors are understood to have convened a grand jury to investigate Noor Salman, whose husband Omar Mateen killed 49 and wounded a further 53 in the worst mass shooting tragedy in modern US history.
It is possible that serial murderer Mateen called his wife from inside the Florida club while the killings were taking place, reports claim.
Although Ms Salman has been questioned since the attack early on Sunday (June 12), she has not been arrested as the authorities are thought to be reluctant to charge her just on the basis of “knowing about the plot in advance”.
But, ultimately, she could still be facing multiple counts of accessory to murder and attempted murder, as well as with failure to warn authorities about the impending attack.
US Senator Angus King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee which received a briefing on the investigation, told CNN that “it appears she had some knowledge of what was going on”.
“She definitely is, I guess you would say, a person of interest right now and appears to be co-operating and can provide us with some important information,” he added.
Mateen had visited the Pulse club as a guest several times over the past three years and interacted with other club goers on gay dating apps, witnesses said.
In interviews with Ms Salman, the FBI learned that she accompanied Mateen on at least one ocassion to the club prior to the attack to do what a US law enforcement officer described as “reconnaissance,” the Washington Post reported. She also accompanied her husband to shop at a firearms dealer, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The FBI has recovered Mateen`s phone and will use location data to verify whether he previously visited the club.
Police investigators found Mateen increasingly sought out so-called Islamic State (Daesh) videos and other radical Islamist propaganda in the months leading up to his shooting rampage.
Some psychologists raised the possibility that Mateen was sexually conflicted and that those feelings might have contributed to his lashing out against gays.
“People who are struggling to come to terms with their sexual identity do at times react to that by doing the exact opposite, which could be to become more masculine or more vocal about their ideals of a traditional family,” said Michael Newcomb, a Northwestern University psychologist.
The attack early on Sunday ended with Mateen being shot dead by police. Of the 53 people wounded, six were listed in critical condition.
In Washington, President Barack Obama said investigators had no information to suggest a foreign terrorist group directed the attack.
He said it was increasingly clear the killer “took in extremist information and propaganda over the internet.
“He appears to have been an angry, disturbed, unstable young man who became radicalised”.
Mateen`s ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, said earlier in the week that he was mentally ill, controlling and abusive.
Amid the latest reports about his club-going, she told CNN: “Well, when we had gotten married, he confessed to me about his past that was recent at that time and that he very much enjoyed going to clubs and the nightlife and there was a lot of pictures of him.”
“I feel like it`s a side of him or a part of him that he lived but probably didn`t want everybody to know about,” she said.
A ‘hard ha