Omar Mateen

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen was an American mass murderer and domestic Islamic terrorist, who was of Afghan descent. He killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a mass shooting at the Pulse gay bar in Orlando, Florida, before being killed in a shootout with the police. Prior to the shooting, he had been investigated by the FBI in 2013 and 2014. Mateen reportedly pledged his allegiance to the Sunni militant jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) before the shooting. Personal life: Mateen was born as Omar Mir Seddique in New Hyde Park, New York, to Afghan parents. His father, Mir Seddique Mateen, is a Pashtun who emigrated in the 1980s and was a supporter of the Mujahideen. After being raised in New York for a few years, he moved with his family to Port St. Lucie in 1991. Mateen attended Martin County High School for one year, and also St. Lucie West Centennial High School, where a schoolmate said he was bullied. Three of his classmates told The Washington Post that Mateen cheered in support of the hijackers during the September 11 attacks. He earned an associate of science degree in criminal justice technology from Indian River State College in 2006. He graduated from Martin County Adult Vocational School in 2003. Mateen worked in a number of local stores and restaurants while attending school. In 2006, he filed a petition for a name change, adding Mateen as his surname to match that of his parents (Persian: متين‎‎ matīn, meaning "strong"/"tough"). The same year, he registered as a member of the Democratic Party, and was still listed as a member in 2016. In April 2009, Mateen married an Uzbekistan-born woman, Sitora Yusifiy, whom he met in 2008 through Myspace, a social networking site. They separated after four months and divorced in July 2011. Mateen visited Saudi Arabia for an eight-day trip in 2011 and a ten-day trip in 2012; the Saudi Interior Ministry said that these trips were to perform umrah (pilgrimage to Mecca). Around these times, he went to the United Arab Emirates. After checking with Saudi officials, FBI Director James Comey said they found nothing incriminating about the trips. By 2013, Mateen married Noor Zahi Salman, who had moved into Mateen's Fort Pierce home in November 2012. By September 2013, they were living in a house in Port St. Lucie with Mateen's father and another relative. Salman left Mateen and joined relatives in Rodeo, California, by December 2015. At the time of his death, Mateen had a three-year-old son with Salman. At the time of the shooting, he lived about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Orlando, Florida, in Fort Pierce, but received mail at his parents' home in nearby Port St. Lucie. According to Florida Department of Law Enforcement records, he had no criminal record in Florida. Employment: In 2006 and 2007, Mateen worked for seven months as a prison guard for the Florida Department of Corrections. He then left the position for an "administrative matter unrelated to misconduct." Mateen then worked for British-based security firm G4S Secure Solutions in Jupiter, Florida from September 2007 until his death. The company said screenings of Mateen, conducted upon hiring and in 2013, had raised no red flags. He held an active firearms license and an armed security guard license. He passed a psychological test and had no criminal record. A former coworker who worked with Mateen in a gated community in western Port St. Lucie described him as "unhinged and unstable". He also said that he frequently made homophobic, racist, and sexist comments, and talked about killing people. The coworker stated he complained to G4S about Mateen "several times". However, a resident who lived at the community since 2011 described Mateen as "very polite" and "a very nice, positive person". Characterization: Mateen's father, Mir Seddique Mateen, who hosted a TV show called Durand Jirga Show on satellite television network Payam-e-Afghan in 2015 in which he represented himself as a candidate for the President of Afghanistan, said of his son's actions, "This had nothing to do with religion." He was quoted as saying that he had seen his son get angry after witnessing a gay couple kiss in front of his family at the Bayside Marketplace in Miami months prior to the attack, which he suggested might have been a motivating factor. Following the nightclub attack, Mateen's ex-wife, Sitora Yusifiy, told media outlets that during their marriage, Mateen was mentally unstable, and would beat her and keep her completely separated from her family. Yusifiy also claimed that he was bipolar and had a history of using steroids. A former high school student told the Washington Post that he witnessed 15-year-old Mateen on the day of the September 11 attacks being physically assaulted by his father, Mir Seddique Mateen, in front of all the other students. Imam Shafiq Rahman at the Fort Pierce Islamic Center told reporters that Mateen would come to the mosque "three or four times a week" with his father and his three-year-old son as recently as two days before the shooting, and said of him, "He was the most quiet guy. He would come and pray and leave. There was no indication at all of violence." Rahman added that he did not preach violence toward homosexuals. A former high school friend and coworker said that despite reports of Mateen's homophobia, a number of his coworkers at Treasure Coast Square, a shopping mall at Jensen Beach, were gay, and that Mateen had no obvious conflicts with them. Sexual identity speculation: There have been speculations by people who knew Mateen that he might have been gay or bisexual. A male friend of his from 2006 when the two were in police academy together has stated that Mateen went to gay clubs with him, and that Mateen once expressed an interest in him; the friend refused because he had not come out yet. Club-goers also recalled Mateen dancing with another man. The Orlando Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post reported that at least five regular customers at the Pulse nightclub had seen Mateen visit the nightclub at least a dozen times. On some occasions, Mateen would drink in a corner by himself, "and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent." A witness who recognized Mateen outside the club an hour before the shootings told investigators that Mateen had been messaging him for about a year using a gay dating app called "Jack'd". He gave his phone to the FBI for analysis, along with his login details for the application. A third witness said that Mateen would try to pick up men at the nightclub. However, these claims were disputed by dozens of witnesses interviewed by the Tampa Bay Times, who stated that they had never seen Mateen at the nightclub. A classmate of Omar Mateen's 2006 Indian River Community College police academy class told The Palm Beach Post that he believed Mateen was gay, saying Mateen once tried to pick him up at a bar. The classmate stated that he, Mateen and other classmates would visit gay bars together. One night, the classmate, who asked not to be identified by name, said Mateen asked him if he was gay. He said no, because he wasn't out at the time. Mateen's father Sidiqque denied that his son was closeted, saying, "If he was gay, why would he do something like this?" Two days later, the elder Mateen appeared to back away from that assertion, after his son's alleged true or repressed sexual orientation became a growing point of inquiry, with multiple witnesses emerging to give evidence on his son's private activities going back at least ten years. Mateen's father did state that he himself did not believe his son was secretly homosexual or bisexual: "I didn't see any of it and I don't believe that was the case." The Wall Street Journal reported Mateen's former wife stating, that "he did feel strongly about homosexuality". Mateen's previous wife said she "didn't know," when asked if Mateen was gay, and recalled that he had confessed to going to nightclubs. Gawker reported that Mateen's ex-wife's current boyfriend, a Brazilian native, told "in Portuguese language" local media there that she had told him that Mateen had "gay tendencies". Sidiqque stated in an online video in his native language, Dari, "In this month of Ramadan, the gay and lesbian issue is something that God will punish," though "the servants of God shouldn't have anything to do with it." Preceding the attack: Mateen legally purchased a SIG Sauer MCX semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm Glock 17 handgun, the two firearms later used in the shooting, from a gun shop in Port St. Lucie two weeks before the shooting. He also attempted to purchase body armor, but was unable to do so as the store where he tried to make the purchase did not sell the product he sought. Officials briefed on the investigation also stated that Mateen went to a Walt Disney World theme park with his wife, presumably to scout it as a possible target. It is unclear which exact theme park was visited by Mateen, although it is speculated that he visited Disney Springs to check it for possible targeting, since Disney Springs' security is more lax than the Disney theme parks' security. He had actually visited both Disney Springs and Pulse from June 1 to June 6 during the Gay Days 2016 celebrations at Disney World and in the general Orlando area. NBC News reported that Noor Salman, Mateen's second wife, told the FBI she "drove him once to the gay nightclub, Pulse, because he wanted to scope it out". An official involved with the investigation told the Associated Press that authorities believe Salman knew about the plot beforehand, but were reluctant to charge her thus far on just that basis. Hours before the attack, Mateen stopped by his parents' home to visit his father, who said he did not notice anything strange about his son during the visit. Alleged links to terrorist groups: Mateen first became a person of interest to the FBI in May 2013, when he came to the FBI's attention after making "inflammatory" statements at a contract security guard job; Mateen told co-workers that he had family connections to al-Qaeda and that he was a member of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is an enemy of ISIL, to which Mateen later pledged allegiance, and FBI Director James Comey noted the "contradictory" nature of Mateen's statements. The FBI opened a preliminary investigation and interviewed Mateen twice; Mateen admitted making the statements but "explained that he said them in anger because his co-workers were teasing him." The FBI closed the investigation after ten months, deeming Mateen not to be a threat. Mateen was on a terrorist watch list during the investigation but was removed once the investigation closed. In July 2014, Mateen's name came to the attention of the FBI after he was linked to Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, an American radical who traveled to Syria and committed a suicide bombing there; the two men knew each other casually and attended the same mosque. The investigation continued with a focus on Abu Salha. U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said that according to the Department of Homeland Security, Mateen had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), though analysts noted that "at this point, it's anyone's guess as to how involved Omar Mateen was with either Al Qaeda or ISIS." Mateen had also pledged support to the al-Nusra Front, a Syrian al-Qaeda branch and opponent of ISIL. Shooting and death: At approximately 2:00 a.m. on June 12, 2016, Mateen entered the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and began shooting. At 2:22 a.m., he made a 9-1-1 call in which he pledged allegiance to ISIL and also referenced Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombers. Mateen took hostages after police arrived and engaged in a gunfight with him. At approximately 5:00 a.m. police shot and killed Mateen, ending the attack. In the end, Mateen had killed 49 people and injured 53 more. The attack was the deadliest mass shooting in United States history, the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in U.S. history, and the deadliest terrorist attack in the U.S. since September 11, 2001.