This was published 8 years ago
Orlando shooter Omar Mateen's confused background clouded by conflicting accounts
By Paul McGeough
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Orlando, Florida: "A good son…" – an unfortunate choice of words by the father of the Orlando slaughter man Omar Mateen, as a swarm of investigators attempts to piece together a crazed jigsaw that might shed light on the senseless death of 49 night clubbers and the wounding of dozens more in the early hours of Sunday morning.
As Orlando, in the heart of the state of Florida, opened for business on Monday, impromptu floral tributes appeared around the city and electronic advertising billboards flashed a simple message: "Pray for Orlando."
Streets around Pulse, a gay nightspot, remained closed and a tight inner cordon of police that has sealed off the remains of a venue that was marketed as Orlando's hottest gay bar, was dwarfed by an outer circle of the satellite dishes of the world's news media.
As the FBI pursued what it described as 'about 100 leads' on Mateen's storming of the club, the agency's director James Comey revealed that in a series of phone conversations with an emergency services dispatcher, at the height of the Pulse drama, Mateen identified three different possible sources of his radicalisation.
Omar Mateen killed 49 people at Pulse nightclub before he was shot dead by police.Credit: Myspace
Holed up in a bathroom where he was holding a group of revellers hostage, Mateen 'made clear his support' for the so-called Islamic State when he pledged loyalty to the leader of that movement.
But according to Comey, he also 'claimed solidarity' with the Boston marathon bombers and with an associate who had died as a suicide bomber for the Al Qaeda aligned Al Nusra Front in Syria – Al Nusra and IS are enemies.
Speaking after a detailed briefing on the investigation, President Barack Obama said that the massacre was being treated as an act of terrorism, but there was no clear evidence that Mateen had been directed by the IS, which has claimed responsibility.
"It does appear that at the last minute he [Mateen] announced allegiance to [IS]," Obama said.
Omar Mateen's ex-wife has spoken publicly. Credit: Myspace
"But there is no evidence so far that he was in fact directed. This is certainly an example of the kind of home-grown extremism that all of us have been concerned about for a very long time."
Investigators also were examining pilgrimages by Mateen to Saudi Arabia, when he visited the holy city of Mecca in 2011 and again in 2012, for a total of 18 days. The travel prompted some security analysts to question the certainty of claims by the authorities that Mateen had acted as a self-radicalised lone wolf, even in the absence of information on other destinations and/or the people Mateen might have met.
Mir Seddique Mateen is the father of Orlando shooter Omar Mateen.Credit: YouTube
Twice married and a graduate in criminal justice technology, Mateen was employed by the global security firm G4S Security Solutions which said in a sparse statement that Mateen had been appointed to the G4S security staff at an undisclosed residential community in South Florida – and there had been no adverse findings when he was subjected to company screening on being recruited in 2007 and again in 2013. And parallel screening by 'a US law enforcement agency' had produced no findings.
It was not clear if G4S was alluding to a pro forma external check on Mateen, or to detailed FBI investigations, first in 2013 and again in 2014, when he was interviewed extensively and put under FBI after workmates reported his claims of association with terrorists. Those investigations were closed after making no substantive findings.
Omar Mateen who opened fire inside the crowded gay nightclub early on Sunday.Credit: AP
Daniel Gilroy, a former G4S colleague, told reporters of two markedly different sides of Mateen – there was the Mateen who enthusiastically arrived early for work and shared his fascination with law enforcement; but there also was the Mateen who had a short emotional fuse and went on hateful rants.
"He had anger management issues. Something would set him off, but the things that would set him off were always women, race or religion," said Gilroy, who subsequently requested a transfer away from Mateen. Gilroy's account added weight to claims by Mateen's former wife that he was physically abusive and, in her judgment, was mentally unstable.
The information that is seeping out on Mateen and his family reveals the tentative contours of a complex family dynamic – the Afghan father was all talk and no action; and a lonely son who had little to say, but in the end proved to be capable of the most destructive action.
Seddique Mateen's first public explanation for the massacre mission was that the son had been offended during a recent visit to Miami when, accompanied by his young son, he sawtwo men kissing and touching.
But the father might also have shaped the son's outlook.
In the hours after the attack, the father also uploaded his own online video critique of homosexuality – parting with his son's resort to extreme action with a declaration that "God will punish those involved in homosexuality – [it's] not an issue that humans should deal with."
Something of an eccentric, the Afghanistan-born father produced his own pro-Taliban clips for a Los Angeles internet TV operation which, larded with anti-US rhetoric, are pitched to a refugee audiences in the US and Europe. At one stage the father appeared to be a supporter of current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani; but more recently has called for Ghani to be jailed and somewhat confusingly, has talked as though he himself, not Ghani, is the president of Afghanistan.
The father and son regularly attended the mosque together.