Orlando gunman posted to Facebook during shooting rampage
Using phone from inside Pulse nightclub, Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to Islamic State, raged against ‘filthy ways of the west’
In the midst of his deadly shooting spree at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub early Sunday, Omar Mateen took to Facebook to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State terror group, promising that more attacks would follow, according to a Senate committee letter released Wednesday.
Mateen, whose rampage left 49 people dead, apparently made a series of Facebook posts and searches before and during his attack on a gay nightclub, raging against the “filthy ways of the west” and blaming the US for the deaths of “innocent women and children.”
Mateen searched for “Pulse Orlando” and “Shooting” online on the morning of the carnage and posted on Facebook, “America and Russia stop bombing the Islamic state,” according to the letter first published by Fox News.
A survivor of the massacre said earlier that Mateen spoke about US bombings in Syria while carrying out the attack.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee sent the letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, asking the company to produce information on Mateen’s online activity and to provide a briefing to the panel. Facebook’s live video application was also apparently used by another Islamist who killed two police in Paris days later.
In its letter, the committee said staffers have learned that five Facebook accounts were associated with the 29-year-old American-born Muslim.
“The real muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west,” Mateen wrote, according to the letter from committee chairman Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican. Johnson did not say how he learned of the posts other than to cite “information obtained by my staff.”
The letter illuminating Mateen’s state of mind in the final hours of his life was released as the long, sad procession of memorials and funerals for the victims began in Orlando and as the FBI appealed for the public’s help in reconstructing the killer’s movements.
“We need your help in developing the most complete picture of what he did and why he did it,” FBI agent Ron Hopper said at a news conference
The FBI is also trying to establish how much Mateen’s wife knew about the attack at Pulse dance club.
As he reportedly did in a call to a 911 operator during the massacre, Mateen pledged his allegiance on Facebook to the leader of the Islamic State and, in his final post, warned, “in the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic state in the usa.”
A person familiar with the situation who is not authorized to speak publicly said the posts came moments before the attack began.
Despite his professed loyalty to the extremist group, the Obama administration has said it has seen no evidence that the shooting rampage was directed by the Islamic State.
A spokesman for the FBI did not immediately return a call for comment Wednesday evening, and Facebook had no immediate comment.
The three-hour rampage began at 2 a.m. Sunday and ended with Mateen being killed by a police SWAT team. The FBI said it was still gathering evidence at the Pulse and analyzing cellphone location data to piece together Mateen’s activities leading up to the massacre, while also interviewing people who had any dealings with him.
A man with links to fundamentalist Islamic terror groups who killed a French policeman and his companion on Monday night was said to have broadcast the attack live on Facebook via his mobile phone.
Larossi Abballa, 25, recorded the attack and posted it on Facebook Live, according to French officials. In the 13-minute video Abballa could be seen stabbing the police commander to death outside their suburban Paris home as their three-year-old son watched in horror.
French security expert David Thomson said the video, along with 15 photos, appeared on Abballa’s Facebook profile – under the name “Mohamed Ali” – before it was suspended hours after the attack.