Orlando Gay Club False Flag

[islamirama]

Official Story: Orlando shooting: 49 killed, shooter pledged ISIS allegiance

An American-born man who'd pledged allegiance to ISIS gunned down 49 people early Sunday at a gay nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in the United States and the nation's worst terror attack since 9/11, authorities said.

* The gunman, Omar Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, Florida, was interviewed by the FBI in 2013 and 2014 but was not found to be a threat, the FBI said.

* Mateen called 911 during the attack to pledge allegiance to ISIS and mentioned the Boston Marathon bombers, according to a U.S. official.

* Orlando police shot and killed Mateen.

* Mateen's ex-wife said she thinks he was mentally ill.

Mateen carried an assault rifle and a pistol into the packed Pulse club about 2 a.m. Sunday and started shooting, killing 49 people and wounding at least 53, officials said.

Mateen had worked since 2007 as a security officer at G4S Secure Solutions, one of the world's largest private security companies.

Scene inside the club

Pulse describes itself as "the hottest gay bar" in the heart of Orlando. Hours before the shooting, the club urged partygoers to attend its "Latin flavor" event Saturday night. The club is a vast, open space that was hosting more than 300 patrons late Saturday and into Sunday morning.

People inside the cavernous nightclub described a scene of panic made more confusing by the loud music and darkness.

"At first it sounded like it was part of the show because there was an event going on and we were all having a good time," clubgoer Andy Moss said. "But once people started screaming and shots just keep ringing out, you know that it's not a show anymore."

Christopher Hansen said he was getting a drink at the bar about 2 a.m. when he "just saw bodies going down." He heard gunshots, "just one after another after another."

The gunshots went on for so long that the shooting "could have lasted a whole song," he said.

When the shots erupted, Hansen hit the ground, crawling on his elbows and knees, before he spotted a man who had been shot.

"I took my bandana off and shoved it in the hole in his back," Hansen said, adding that he saw another woman who appeared to be shot in the arm.

Survivors provided CNN with dramatic accounts of how they avoided death. One person hiding in the bathroom covered herself with bodies to protect herself. Some entertainers hid in a dressing room when the shooting started and escaped the building by crawling out when police removed the air conditioning unit.

One of the bartenders said she hid under the glass bar. Police came in and said, "If you are alive, raise your hand." Then police got her and others out.

After the initial shooting, police surrounded the club while Mateen was inside with clubgoers hiding in bathrooms and other parts of the building. People inside the club were communicating on their phones with law enforcement from that time until around 5 a.m., when authorities used an armored vehicle to break down the door of the building.

- CNN and rest of mainstream media.

Comments:

In the official story, the media was saying it's a Muslim who pledged allegiance to ISIS and did the shooting. He was called a terrorist and this was called a terrorist attack. There no mention of anyone else being involved, no video recording of the call provided and eye witnesses who said contrary to the official narrative were cut off from live feed.

[islamirama]

CIA has not found any link between Orlando killer and Isis, says agency chief

John Brennan told the Senate intelligence committee Thursday that CIA has no evidence of a connection between Omar Mateen and the Islamic State

The Central Intelligence Agency chief has not been “able to uncover any link” between Orlando killer Omar Mateen and the Islamic State, despite Mateen’s stated allegiance to the jihadist group during Sunday’s LGBT nightclub massacre.

The FBI has determined that Mateen was not directed by or in contact with Isis before his attack at the Pulse nightclub. In Facebook posts from inside the club and a 911 call during the attack, Mateen reportedly declared his allegiance to Isis, something investigators are examining, particularly in light of his apparently complicated relationship with his sexuality.

While there appears to be no indication thus far that Mateen encrypted his digital data, Brennan said he “wonder[ed] whether we as a government do have the ability to monitor that domain for threats to our national security”.

His comment harkened back to an ultimately abandoned effort by the FBI and the justice department to compel Apple to weaken encryption on its operating system for a speculative effort to access an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists. Its fallout accelerated acrimony and distrust between the US government and Silicon Valley, particularly over digital security.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ghtclub-attack

[islamirama]

There was More than One Shooter at Pulse in Orlando

6.12.16
http://www.dangerandplay.com/2016/06...se-in-orlando/


Real life is not like the movies. People are surprisingly hard to kill. Bullets, even from an AR-15 “assault rifle” do not leave one person to kill others.

Currently the media has created a narrative. Omar Mateen acted alone when he shot up the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. This “lone wolf” killed over 50 people and maimed 53. That’s a casualty count of over 100.

Even at closed quarters, it takes several rounds to kill a person. People are terrible shots. People who are full of adrenaline and have been running are also terrible shots. Witness interviews also indicate that Mateen shot into the ceiling.

How many rounds of ammo did Mateen have, and would that number be enough to take out over 100 people?

To prove this to be true, here is what we would need:

• Firearms used (currently rumored to be an AR-15, plus a “handgun”)
• Each magazine used
• Casualty count (total dead and wounded)
• Ballistic report from each victim (how many rounds are in each victim)
• Pictures of entire structure with bullet holes counted

The firearms used and expended magazines would tell us how many bullets were fired into Pulse and the victims. We would also need to match the ballistic reports to the firearm used to ensure that no other firearm (and thus shooter) was responsible for the deaths of the victims.

@Cernovich Don't forget ballistic report from each victim must match one of the two guns shooter used
— Alex Graham (@Mr_Alex_Graham) June 13, 2016

Why isn’t the media even asking for this basic evidence?

We’d need a count of all bullets found in Pulse to apply some math. Why? Let’s reason this out.

Assuming the shooter had tactical training, he’d be carrying a load bearing vest with 8 fully loaded 30 round magazines, for a total of 9 magazines (one on his weapon). That’s 270 rounds.


Mateen would also have a fully-loaded pistol with an unknown number of magazines. Let’s assume he was using a 9mm handgun, which holds a 15 round magazine, and that he was carrying 4 additional magazines. That’s 75 rounds of 9mm ammo.

In total, Mateen would have had 345 rounds of ammunition.

If you think 345 rounds of ammo is a lot, talk to some soldiers. People are hard to kill.

Also watch this video. You can hear 30 rounds go off in a matter of seconds. Yet somehow the shooter was killing people for 3 hours?

Talk to any soldier. Even at close ranges, that is not much ammo. According to the official story, Mateen averaged 3.45 rounds per casualty. That short of sheer killing power would make him the envy of even trained special operations soldiers.

If Mateen had over 345 rounds of ammo, where was he holding it?

Some other questions and objections to consider.

.@AnthonyCumia The math on ammo needed to kill 50 and maim 53 does not add up, it would be thousands of rounds. That's 60-80 pounds of ammo.
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 13, 2016

"But it was in close quarters!" This means people are RUNNING. Harder for one person to hit. If you've had training, this does NOT add up.
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 13, 2016

Right. Once shots are fired, It's panic. People are running. Makes it hard to hit targets. https://t.co/ZRsJYMdTbU
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 13, 2016

Grab an AR-15, put on a vest with 8 fully loaded magazines. Run 100 meters. Then see how accurate you are, even at close quarters.
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 13, 2016

Multiple witness reported seeing multiple shooters.

Eye witness accounts are of course suspect, and we must be aware of hoaxes. Yet the media isn’t even asking questions or doing research.

"Shooter called someone else and mentioned he was the fourth shooter." Watch interview below. https://t.co/SPLWh9kBWG
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 13, 2016

Witness: Orlando shooter asked club goers their race, said U.S.
needs to "stop bombing ISIS"#PrayForOrlandohttps://t.co/kE09dV6gIK
— AlwaysActions (@AlwaysActions) June 13, 2016

@Cernovich IIRC on the radio last night I heard references to multiple shooters a few times. Is there a way to D/L that audio?
— Jester (@neoDesertFox) June 13, 2016


http://www.dangerandplay.com/2016/06...se-in-orlando/

“I heard gunfire coming from two directions.” – Eyewitness

One eye witness told a reporter:

“When I dropped to the floor and saw people crying and covered in blood. The scent of the ammunition and bullets, I was like ‘This is real life. This is happening right now.’”

He said he never saw the gunman, who was in an adjacent room about 20 feet away. He said he thought the initial burst of gunfire lasted eight or nine minutes.

“He kept on shooting and shooting and shooting, rapid fire,’’ Gonzalez said, “and he’d change (clips), put in more ammunition — bud-dudda. I could smell the ammo in the air.’’

He said he heard another gun from a different direction, so he wonders if there were two gunmen.

Why would the government and media lie?

This is "journalism." Gov't tells "journalists" a story. They repeat it. If you believe any thought or analysis is going on, you're wrong.
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 13, 2016

You think that the media asks questions. My friends, they don't even know the questions to ask. Most "journalists" have never fired a gun.
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 13, 2016

There is more to the story than the media is reporting.

As a lawyer I am taught to NOT trust the government. Everyone else in media simply repeats what they are told. I think for myself.
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 13, 2016

Remember that “journalists” hate guns.

Simply read my analysis, above.

Why isn’t the media asking about the tactical gear Omar S. Mateen was using?

They don’t even know what questions to ask, and all anyone is doing is repeating what the government has told them.


As you follow the story, look for this evidence. If we don’t see all of this, then there was a second shooter.

• Firearms used
• Each magazine used
• Casualty count
• Ballistic report from each victim
• Pictures of entire structure with bullet holes counted

Again, why isn’t the media even asking to see this evidence? Why is every story merely repeating the official story?


Think for yourselves.

Army Rangers, Navy SEALS spend hundreds of hours drilling before doing a raid. But some nobody ran a solo op and took out over 100? *Think*
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) June 13, 2016

If you think this is crazy, you should read Gorilla Mindset.

[islamirama]

Orlando, race, and the meaning of terror

6.13.16


One thing is clear about American politics in light of the massacre in Orlando: Muslims who commit mass acts of violence are easily and immediately deemed terrorists. White people who do the same thing are not.

The mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub revealed the subtle biases in the language that public officials use to define terror and who is eligible to perpetrate it.

It was a matter of hours on Sunday before local authorities and national politicians began labeling Omar Mateen, the gunman, an Islamic terrorist. In some cases the label was applied even before law enforcement officials began telling reporters that Mateen had pledged allegiance to ISIS during the attack.

His Muslim name and Afghan ethnicity were enough to make that call.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., condemned “this heartbreaking act of terrorism.” Mentioning Mateen’s “Afghan heritage,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee warned “self-hating liberals” of worse to come if they do not realize the dangers of “radical Islam.” Even more pronounced in his language was Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas: From 9/11 to the Boston Marathon, from Fort Hood to Chattanooga, from San Bernardino to last night’s horrific attack in Orlando, radical Islamic terrorism has declared jihad on America.”

Last year, however, few politicians used the word “terrorist” to describe Dylann Roof, who murdered nine people in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Rubio’s first response was to say that he was “saddened by the news from Charleston.” Cruz’s statement the next day did not mention terror. He was making gun jokes within a week. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina described Roof as “one of these whacked-out kids,” and Gov. Nikki Haley expressed bafflement as to his motivation. Roof had expressed hatred for black people, and was photographed burning an American flag and proudly holding a Confederate one.

Why the difference in treatment between Mateen and Roof?

“The word ‘terrorist’ is being used here to turn our attention away from the deep-seated hatreds that animate American public life,” Eddie Glaude, a professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton University, told me.

“Dylann Roof gives us an example of how racism might evidence itself in extreme violence, and the way in which (politicians) contained it was by talking about him. ‘He’s crazy. That’s the problem.’ So there was a way to contain it so it doesn’t become an occasion for us to reflect on how profoundly racist this society still is.”

Essentially, describing Roof’s actions as terrorism would have been an indictment of America itself.

“Recognizing acts of terrorism requires action by the state, and I think that is something many white politicians don’t conceive of as possible when violence is inflicted against black people,” Chad Williams, an associate professor and chairman of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis University, told me. “It’s much easier, given the makeup of our political racial climate, to demonize Muslims and to transform that into political talking points.”

In the 24 hours after the Orlando attack, media reports were full of questions about how Mateen might have been radicalized. But little was discussed a year ago about how homegrown racism had radicalized Roof. The Confederate flag came down in a lot of places, but only a after careful weighing of hatred against “heritage.”

“I had to read about Anne Frank as a little black girl in New Orleans. I was made to empathize with her, but never being taught slave narratives,” Yaba Blay, a professor of political science at historically black North Carolina Central University, told me. “And I show (my students) images of a Confederate flag. And we have conversations about Southern pride. We’re very clear about what the swastika represents and how there is no gray area. If someone walks in with a swastika, we’re not talking about free speech. But when we see the Confederate flag, all of a sudden it is up for discussion.”

No one is challenging the sheer brutality of what happened in Orlando. It is possible to be fueled by hate and seek to sow terror at the same time. But the language of whom to deem a terrorist and why is very much a political decision. What is deemed terror against America and Americans, and what is deemed to have radicalized someone to perpetrate it?


Why aren’t we engaged in a conversation about “Christian extremism”?

Because engaging in one would mean that America would no longer be able to focus on Islam or people in the Middle East as the only threats to the fabric of American security. It would have to focus on itself. Taking a critical look at American hate-mongering through anti-gay legislation, lax gun laws that allow people like Mateen to legally own weapons, and symbols like the Confederate flag would force this country to ask whether it is dispensing its own style of propaganda against its own people.

The reality is that America is not ready to face the ugliness of racism, homophobia, and indifference to life in favor of loose gun laws. Right now, focusing on Islam as inherently violent is more comforting.

http://fusion.net/story/313760/omar-...m_content=link

[islamirama]

Manufactured Terrorism The Orlando Santa Monica Connection !


Howell Says CIA and Four Other Suspects were Involved in Planned Sunday Massacres

Sources within the Santa Monica police department claim that James Wesley Howell, an Indiana man who was caught with explosives and weapons on Sunday Morning, told the Santa Monica police that as many as five people were involved in planned attacks on gay communities in both Florida and California.

According to the LA Times, Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks initially said on Twitter that the 20-year-old Indiana man (James Howell) told one of her officers after he was arrested that he wanted “to harm the Gay Pride event.”

However, after the FBI quickly took over the case, a Santa Monica police spokesman Saul Rodriguez indicated that Seabrooks was mistaken and offered that the Santa Monica detectives who were working the case are “not aware of what the suspect’s intentions were at this point.”

you want proof? Call the Santa Monica PD, they released this story. SMH
Address: 333 Olympic Dr, Santa Monica, CA 90401 Phone310) 395-9931
Please share this vigorously and help me fight this false flag event.

THWARTED LOS ANGELES GAY PRIDE KILLER JAMES HOWELL SAYS HE WAS A CO-CIA OPERATIVE WITH OMAR MATEEN AND OTHERS TO ATTACK GAYS IN CALIFORNIA AND FLORIDA !




The official version of this story released by the LA Times falsely claims that on early Sunday, Santa Monica police received a call about a suspected prowler who was knocking on a resident’s door and window about 5 a.m. in the 1700 block of 11th Street, Santa Monica police said.Patrol officers responded and encountered Howell, who was sitting in a car registered in Indiana, police said. Officers inspected the car and found three assault rifles, high-capacity ammunition and a 5-gallon bucket containing “chemicals capable of forming an improvised explosive device,” police said.A law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity said the contents of the bucket included Tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to create pipe bombs.

The source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation, said authorities also found camouflage clothing in the car.Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said the suspect told police he was going to the Pride parade to look for a friend. Authorities were looking for that individual.

Do police chiefs make these kind of errors everyday?

The real truth of the story was released to a former Los Angeles County prosecutor who works for Get Off the BS by two Santa Monica police officers that have been issued gag orders under threat of Federal prosecution for talking further talking about the incident.

According to two department sources, Howell called the Santa Monica police on Sunday morning claiming that he needed protection from the CIA. Howell further elaborated to the dispatcher stating that he “had been set up by the CIA – they are going to kill me.”

According to Howell, he was in LA to meet with another person in a collaborated attack on the gay communities in both Florida and Los Angeles.

Howell additionally stated that, “everything has gone south. Dan was gone when I got here. They killed the leader of the Florida attack this morning. They are going to kill me. I need protection.”

According to sources within the police department’s investigation Howell indicated to officers who first made contact with him that Howell claimed he was one of five people involved in a planned Sunday attack on both the east and west coasts.Howell stated that he was suppose to “hook up” late Saturday night with his contact in LA who was suppose to have more weapons and chemicals to mix with the Tannerite he was in possession of.

“When I got here, Dan was gone. I went to his apartment and he had cleared out….I tried calling him but he never answered me,” said Howell.

When questioned about the other four people involved in the plot, Howell was only familiar with the first names of three of the alleged suspects, naming his contact in LA – Dan and two of the three contacts in Florida, Omar and Brandy

Speaking of the suspect killed in the Pulse Bar massacre in Florida, Howell stated, “Omar was not suppose to be killed. They lied to us – Omar and Brandy were suppose to get away.”

When Howell was questioned about how he and his conspirators knew each other, he said that,

“We were all familiar with each other through an online fundamental Islamic knowledge seminary course_[1] – we were recruited through the course and trained together at a camp in Virginia – we were taught how to shoot and make bombs – everyone knew their part – something went wrong….”

Before the officers could further question Howell, agents working for the Los Angeles office of the FBI quickly swept in and took over the case. Santa Monica detectives were never allowed to talk with Howell.In summary, it appears that Howell was on his way to “hook up” with another conspirator (Dan)
to set off explosives and shoot people at the gay pride parade in Hollywood California on Sunday.Finding his contact missing when he got to LA and having heard that Omar Matteen had been killed by a FBI SWAT teem in Orlando, Howell determined he had been double crossed by the CIA and feared for his own life. Howell was taken in to custody by the FBI before Santa Monica police officers could further question him about the motives behind killing gay people on both coasts of the US on Sunday.However, in absence of further information and or anyone who will officially go on the record, there is no doubt that the America public is not being told the truth about the Orlando Florida shooting and the arrest of Howell on Sunday.It is a shame that the Fed’s got to the Santa Monica police chief on Sunday before she was silenced, however we are very thankful that at least two officers have risked their jobs and freedom to reveal what she would of most likely Tweeted had the Fed’s not got to her.Would you like to make odds that it was just a “coincidence” as the mainstream media reports, that Howell armed to the teeth with assault rifles and explosives, was on his way to a gay pride parade the same day as the massacre in Florida?This Post made with Assistance of Truthcatradio #truthcat #truthcats #truthcatradio



Follow CIA/NSA contractor and wistleblower Steven D Kelley

Shortly after the posting of this story, Main-Stream USA News shed light on the Online Islamic Fundamental course Howell spoke of.Omar Mateen Did Not Act Alone!

http://wearechange.org/manufactured-...ca-connection/

[islamirama]

Press TV: Orlando shooting false flag event aimed at demonizing Muslims




Now that we know Omar Mateen was gay, will the whole MSM script be re-written to blame gays instead of Muslims? Will Trump call for a ban on gays? Will he propose forcing all gays in America to register? The FBI apparently hopes not, since they aretrying to silence witnesses who knew Mateen was gay, according to one of those witnesses, Mateen’s ex-wife Sitora Yusufiy.

The Guardian reports: “Jim Van Horn, 71, told the Associated Press Mateen was a ‘regular’ at the Pulse nightclub where the murders took place. ‘He was trying to pick up people. Men,’ he said. ‘He was a homosexual and he was trying to pick up men. He would walk up to them and then he would maybe put his arm round them or something … That’s what people do at gay bars. That’s what we do.’

So meet yet another “radical Islamic terrorist” whose lifestyle was radically un-Islamic – like Mohammed Atta, that lover of pork chops, cocaine, whiskey, prostitutes, and gambling junkets, according to many witnesses including his pink-haired stripper girlfriend Amanda Keller.

Maybe instead of having Muslims register at DHS and wear gold crescent moons, Trump should consider forcing them to practice their religion. For it is the non-practicing, degenerate people with Muslim names who are consistently being blamed for virtually every major terrorist attack in the West since Atta and his crew of boozing, whoring druggies who never went near a mosque were (falsely) blamed for 9/11.A law mandating that all Muslims practice their religion would be just as constitutional as the other Muslim-related measures Trump is proposing.

And since statistics show that practicing Muslims are associated with extremely low rates of crime, drug addiction, divorce, alcoholism, suicide, and other negative social indicators – as well as extremely low rates of terrorism, which is virtually always blamed on gay “Muslims,” “Muslims” with pink-haired stripper girlfriends, and other “Muslims in name only” – such a law would be good for taxpayers, society as a whole, and (especially) Muslims themselves.Maybe Trump could even personally behead any Muslims who commit acts that are considered criminal and/or sinful under Islamic legal systems. Think of the TV ratings THAT would bring to his ongoing political reality show! “Donald Trump presents: The Daily Beheading!” The tens of thousands of FBI agents surveilling every mosque in America could focus on ferreting out un-Islamic behavior by nominal Muslims, capturing the culprits, and delivering them to the sword-wielding Trump to decapitate on live television.

(When he talked about things “much worse” than waterboarding, maybe that was what he had in mind?)Unfortunately, it won’t happen. Instead, the media will continue to use a mass shooting blamed on a gay man to demonize Islam. It makes me so angry I could almost behead somebody. (I wish the Democrats would protect me from myself by enacting sword-control legislation.)On second thought, in lieu of rushing out in search of a sword and some choppable heads, I guess I’ll just keep venting my spleen on Press TV. Here are my two latest interviews.

More at http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/06...esstv-orlando/

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FBI Told the Orlando Shooter’s Ex-Wife NOT to Tell Media He was Gay — Here’s Why

Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/fbi...8RIXIFWHlSU.99

On Tuesday, Marco Diaz, the current fiancé of Orlando shooter Omar Mateen’s former wife Sitora Yusufiy, told Brazilian television station SBT Brazil that Yusufiy believed Mateen was gay and that she had witnessed Mateen’s father call him gay several times, but that “the FBI asked her not to tell this to the American media.”

The FBI and law enforcement in the United States have steadfastly stuck to a narrative of “Islamist terrorism,” with their alleged demand from Mateen’s ex-wife to remain silent about his homosexual proclivities suggesting they want to downplay the glaring personal and self-hating nature of the attack in favor of the Islamic terrorism-related one that helps increase governmental power and control.

Following the Orlando massacre, Mateen’s action had been labeled as an act of “Islamic terrorism” by a wide spectrum of talking heads and politicians after widespread reports of his pledging support to the Islamic State (ISIS), but there’s much more to this story than what is being generally reported in the mainstream media.

Yusufiy says that just months into their marriage, Mateen started emotionally and physically abusing her – exploding in anger and often beating her. She claims her family “literally rescued” her from the abusive relationship and his mental instability.

In addition, a former classmate of Mateen said that the killer, who is reported to have been a regular at the gay nightclub, had previously asked him out romantically. Kevin West, a regular at Pulse, told the Los Angeles Times he had exchanged messages with Mateen on a gay dating app.

On Wednesday, representatives for gay dating apps Jack’d and Grindr said they had been contacted by the FBI as part of the Orlando shooting investigation. Representatives for the companies said they would not provide any information on whether Mateen had profiles on those sites due to those details being part of a classified investigation. In response to an inquiry from BuzzFeed News, Grindr released a statement saying: “We will continue to cooperate with the authorities and do not comment on ongoing investigations.”

Another oddity for someone purported by the media narrative to be an “Islamist terrorist” was Mateen’s call to police in which he allegedly pledged loyalty to the Islamic State during the attack, as he had previously espoused support for both Hezbollah and al-Qaeda — each of these groups have drastically different interpretations of Islam and are currently fighting against one another on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war, with both Hezbollah and al-Qaeda actively engaged in fighting against ISIS as well.

For someone purported to be an Islamic terrorist, it seems that Mateen had an extremely elementary understanding of militant Islamist extremist groups, and their differing and conflicting ideologies.

Interestingly, the 911 call in which Mateen is alleged to have pledged loyalty to ISIS is being blocked from public release. Through a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request, a journalist from Alternet attempted to obtain the 911 call made by Mateen during the attacks. The reporter received a message that the records are exempt from disclosure at this time due to a Florida Statute, which exempts from disclosure all active criminal investigative information. Oddly, the agency later publicly denied that they had refused the journalist’s FOIA request.Make no mistake that the mainstream media’s “fear the terrorist” coverage of Mateen’s allegiance to ISIS, without any actual evidence that the group had anything to do with this attack, allows for politicians like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to call for more “boots on the ground” in the Middle East, ratchet up of the surveillance state at home and call for regulating firearms.

In contrast to the mainstream media narrative of Mateen as a “terrorist,” the picture that is actually coming together of his life is that of a very troubled individual — someone who had a history of domestic violence, a struggle with his sexual orientation, and an inclination toward radical Islam – but without any solid intellectual Islamist base as revealed by his support for groups currently in open combat with one another.

The media has been remiss in their duty to cover Mateen’s psychological history as it relates to his sexuality — and the subsequent massacre — instead choosing to run with a fear-based narrative, underpinned with identity politics, that allows for the military-industrial complex and the security apparatus to grow budgets and usurp individual liberty. How politically convenient that the “terrorism” narrative being sold to the public serves to further entrench the military-surveillance complex in the United States, which erodes essential liberty, while the raging mental health crisis that currently engulfs our country is boldly ignored.

http://usuncut.com/news/orlando-shoo...ive-collapsed/

[islamirama]

The Official Narrative of the Orlando Shooter Has Completely Collapsed


6.22.16

A man who claims to have had a sexual relationship with Orlando killer Omar Mateen says the massacre at the Pulse nightclub was “revenge,” not terrorism.


Mateen’s former lover, who was identified only as “Miguel” in aninterview with Spanish-language network Univision, said he and Mateen were “friends with benefits” for roughly two months after meeting on a gay dating site. The two had met 15 to 20 times, with their last tryst occurring in December of 2015.


Miguel told reporter Maria Elena Salinas that he would have never suspected Mateen to be capable of carrying out the mass shooting that led to the deaths of 49 and the wounding of over 50 others.


“I never detected anything. He was a very sweet guy,” Miguel said. “He loved to cuddle… That was one of the things I was starting to see from him. He was looking for love. He wanted to be embraced.”


Miguel added that in conversations with Mateen about his practice of Islam, the Orlando shooter described his Muslim faith as a “beautiful and spiritual religion.”
“It’s a religion where everything is about love. Everybody is welcome. Gay, trans, bisexual, hetero, everybody,” Miguel said.


This seems to fly in the face of the official narrative that Mateen was motivated by a desire to carry out an attack of Islamic terror in the name of ISIS, based on the 911 call he made on the night of the shooting.


According to Miguel, Mateen became enraged that a former gay lover had told him after their relationship that he had contracted the HIV virus. He also felt spurned by clubgoers at Pulse, feeling they had used him for sex.


“He adored Latinos, gay Latinos, with brown skin – but he felt rejected. He felt used by them – there were moments in the Pulse nightclub that made him feel really bad. Guys used him. That really affected him,” Miguel said. “I believe this crazy horrible thing he did – that was revenge.”


Mateen had deeply conflicted emotions regarding his sexuality, as Miguel described him as “100 percent gay” and said he only maintained a marriage to hold up a heterosexual screen. Miguel told Salinas that on one particular night, Mateen, who never revealed his name to Miguel, asked Miguel for a private conversation, in which he informed his lover that he was married and had a child. After a long conversation in which Miguel asked Mateen what he wanted, Mateen had said he wanted to continue their relationship in secret.


He added that he was completely stunned when he heard about the massacre. “My reaction was that can’t be the man I know. It’s impossible that the man I know could do that,” Miguel said.


The FBI confirmed they had spoken to Miguel as part of their investigation, but would not confirm or deny any of the details of the bombshell interview.

http://usuncut.com/news/orlando-shoo...ive-collapsed/

[islamirama]

Orlando Shooter Wasn’t the First Murderer Employed By Global Mercenary Firm


6.14.16

THE MAN WHO shot over 100 people and killed 49 in an Orlando nightclub Saturday worked at a retirement home as a security guard for G4S – a giant, often controversial global contracting corporation that provides mercenary forces, prison guards and security services. G4S is one of the world’s largest private security companies, with more than 620,000 employees and a presence in over 100 countries.

G4S’s statement says that Mateen was subject to “checks from a U.S. law enforcement agency with no findings reported to G4S.” But according to theNew York Times, the investigation took place because of “reports from [Mateen’s] coworkers, that he… suggested he may have had terrorist ties.”


G4S has previously been accused of improperly vetting its employees. In 2009, Danny Fitzsimons, a former British paratrooper and employee of a G4S subsidiary, killed two colleagues in Iraq, claiming to be “the antichrist” and saying he “must satisfy” his “bloodlust.” An official investigation concluded that his employer did not properly vet his psychological health.


In 2007, G4S signed contracts with five Israeli prisons and “interrogation centers,” leading to accusations that it was complicit in torture and theimprisonment of children. In 2010, three G4S security guards killed an Angolan national during a deportation flight from the U.K., by restraining him in an asphyxiating position.


In January, five G4S officers were arrested after a BBC expose revealed systematic abuse and neglect at a G4S-run youth jails.


G4S has also become a focal point for the Israel-focused Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement over its partnerships with Israeli prisons and military checkpoints. Activist pressure has led to divestment from the company by theBill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Methodist Church, and UNICEFin Jordan. G4S has since announced that it would end its Israeli prison contracts.


In 2002, G4S acquired the United States-based Wackenhut Corporation, a private security and prison contractor with a deeply troubled history, including the widespread sexual assault of inmates at a Texas detention center in 1999.


Wackenhut went on to win a contract to guard the U.S. Embassy at Kabul, worth $189 million over five years. In 2009, the Project on Government Oversight sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with photographic evidence that embassy guards had created a “Lord of the Flies environment,” at the embassy, said to include guards and supervisors “peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks… [drunken] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity.”


Nevertheless, Wackenhut was hired by the U.S. government and BP in 2010 to manage perimeter security for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf Coast.


In 2011, G4S won a contract to provide security for the 2012 London Olympics – only to overcharge the British government and provide understaffed security.
On the news that Mateen worked for G4S, the company’s stock dropped 6.6 percent, wiping out $280 million in company value.


https://theintercept.com/2016/06/14/...ercenary-firm/

[islamirama]

ORLANDO MASSACRE: The Back Story to this Black Operation

Orlando Shootings: Another B-Grade Production by the Department of Defense’s Bureau of Broadcast Governors?


By Anonymous Patriots


We have much to say about the shootings today and plan on writing a more comprehensive article which you will find exclusively on this website. But in the meantime, we wanted to quickly get out this info to our fellow patriots.

Remember that we taught you in an earlier article how to spot a false flag event. If you haven’t read this piece, educate yourself so that you are armed with truth.

“FALSE FLAGS” are LEGAL PROPAGANDA PRODUCED by the Department of Defense


The 6-12-16 mass shooting in Orlando, Florida fit all the characteristics of False Flags. Please check them yourself and see if the supposed “narrative network” fits the bill of all the other gun grabs we see happening lately. In just the last weekend there have been five shootings in the Orlando area just to make sure that if we didn’t believe one of them – we might believe another.

These gunmen attack all aspects of society including Christians, LGBT’s, straights, business people, innocent people of all ranks of life sending one common message – American’s are not safe and it is automatic weapons that do all the damage.

full article at : http://themillenniumreport.com/2016/...ack-operation/

[islamirama]

Judge Napolitano: “Nobody died until 05:13 in the morning”

According to the FBI, the supposed Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, entered the club around 02:00 AM and began his killing spree. However, as Judge Andrew Napolitano points out in this clip, that story — the story based off of the unredacted FBI transcript released Monday — doesn’t just directly contradict eye witness testimony, but the FBI’s official narrative itself.

[islamirama]

FBI-framed “radical imam” blows Orlando wide open!

7.10.16

He refused the CIA's orders to shoot Americans - details remain classified



By Kevin Barrett, Veterans Today Editor, youtube by John Hankey


Fox News, apparently citing FBI liars and mass murderers, tried to frame “radical imam” Marcus Dwayne Robertson just hours after the Orlando shooting. “Law enforcement sources” (a.k.a. FBI criminals) lied to the media, saying that Omar Mateen had been a student in Robertson’s on-line religious school.

The FBI’s slanderous lie appears to have been part of a pre-scripted attempt to “sell” the Orlando shooting as a “radical Islamic terror” event. And yes, “pre-scripted” means that the FBI was in on the mass killing in advance. There is no way they could have cranked out this kind of propaganda, blaming an innocent former CIA asset, if it wasn’t scripted ahead of time.

To its credit, Fox News gave Robertson a chance to respond. And Robertson made the most of it. Watch the amazing “first draft” youtube above.


Who is Marcus Dwayne Robertson? A decent guy, it appears, but one who made the mistake of signing on as an asset of the FBI-CIA/Wackenhut-Mossad terror-industrial complex. He probably thought he was going to “help stop terrorism” and earn a few bucks on the side. Big mistake.


The CIA-FBI-Mossad turned against Robertson when he refused to accept a job that required him to shoot American citizens. That isn’t speculation, that’s on an official court document.


CIA to Robertson: “If you refuse our orders to shoot Americans, we’ll label you a ‘terrorist.'” (This sequence is found after the 17:00 minute mark in the video)



Robertson may have occasionally taken on the theatrical role of a dangerous radical as part of his CIA duties. When he refused to shoot American citizens, they cut him loose, “flagged” him as a “radical terror suspect”…and took revenge by framing him for their own mass shooting in Orlando.


The FBI does terrible things to American Muslims who refuse to cooperate with their dastardly schemes. Tarek Mehanna, for example, was sentenced to seventeen years in prison for refusing to act as an FBI informant. And if the CIA orders you to shoot American citizens, I guess they expect you to do it…or else.


Omar Mateen, a flaming homosexual drunkard not a practicing Muslim, was almost certainly the same kind of FBI-CIA/Wackenhut-Mossad asset. Like Robertson only more so, Mateen’s job was to run around saying crazy radical things and report people’s reaction to FBI-CIA-Mossad. Was he told he would be likewise just playing a part in a theatrical event in the Pulse nightclub? Did other shooters, perhaps including a Mateen look-alike, do the damage?


In the above video, Marcus Dwayne Robertson cuts through the Fox News and FBI BS and tells it like it is. Far from being a radical Islamic terrorist, he appears to be a good person and a sincere Muslim whose only crime was to refuse to carry out a CIA-sponsored terrorist attack on American citizens.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/07/10/fbi-imam/

[islamirama]

How Noor Salman Became The Scapegoat Of The Pulse Massacre


Prosecutors say she helped her husband’s terror attack. Her supporters say she’s innocent and the case is “rooted in gendered Islamophobia.”


Noor Salman looked up as the prosecutor directed the jury’s attention to a copy of her 2011 marriage certificate. There, on the screen, was her looping signature, right next to Omar Mateen’s. Proof she wed a killer.

The 31-year-old widow shivered and hiked a purple blanket up to her neck, glancing over at her team of defense attorneys for reassurance. They often soothed her in court with physical touch, squeezing her shoulder or patting her arm. Her fear was palpable.

Later, Salman watched herself on the same screen, testing perfumes at Victoria’s Secret. In the security camera footage shown to the jury, she sniffed a paper strip, then passed it to her husband for his thoughts. He must have agreed; they left with a shiny pink bag.

Three days after that shopping trip, Mateen slaughtered 49 people inside Pulse nightclub in Orlando. In calls with police from the scene, he declared allegiance to ISIS and said he acted to avenge U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. At the time, it was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Mateen was killed during the attack.

While her husband was committing mass murder, Salman was in her pajamas, asleep in their home in Fort Pierce, Florida. Seven months later, she was charged with aiding and abetting her husband and obstructing justice for allegedly lying to the FBI. Prosecutors claimed that Salman helped her husband scout potential locations for the attack, created a cover story for him and participated in unusual spending.

The seemingly ordinary excursion to a mall store was now center stage in a federal terrorism trial. In the days leading up to the shooting, Mateen spent thousands of dollars on Salman, buying her clothes and jewelry, including a diamond ring. Prosecutors suggested she got the gifts in exchange for agreeing to help him carry out his heinous plan.

There was zero evidence that Salman was radicalized herself, they admitted. Instead, they argued that she was content to trade her husband – the sole provider for her and her 3-year-old son – for baubles and designer wear.

Salman, who did not testify in the trial herself, pleaded not guilty, and maintained through her lawyers that she had no knowledge of Mateen’s plans. When he began showering her with presents in the weeks before the massacre, Salman was optimistic about their future, her lawyers said, and believed it was a sign her husband – a brutish, abusive man who only permitted her a $20 allowance each week – was changing.

By the time of the trial, Salman had spent 14 months in jail, mostly in solitude. Each day, she was allowed a single phone call to her son, but that was it. She missed holding him and hugging him, her family said.

During opening statements, Salman’s lawyer said she had been eagerly awaiting her day in court. After her arrest, rumors and speculations about her abounded and settled in like a rot. She drove him to the club that night. She was a member of ISIS. She fled the country after the attack. All were untrue.

Finally, in court, she got to set the record straight.

Perpetrator Or Victim?

Outside the federal courthouse, on a lunch break from the trial, Salman’s cousin was seething. Susan Adieh, didn’t recognize the one-dimensional cliched caricature the prosecution had described, and she didn’t understand why Salman was on trial. The wives of other terrorists and mass killers never faced charges. She wondered if her family’s religion played a role, even though Salman was not religious.

After all, they were Muslim.

Adieh, 59, who owns several convenience stores in Mississippi, has known Salman since she was born. She attended every day of the trial, sitting a few rows behind her, along with Salman’s uncles and other cousins. Salman’s father died in 2012, and her mother, who currently takes care of Salman’s young son in California, couldn’t attend the trial because of health issues. In her absence, Adieh stepped up as a momma bear figure, advocating on behalf of her cousin in interviews with the press.

Susan Clary, the family spokesperson, said that many other relatives wanted to come to support Salman, but they were afraid. As Muslim Americans, they worried about being associated with the terrorism case; their jobs could be at stake.

In court, Adieh nodded along with Salman’s defense attorneys when they made a point she liked and scowled when the prosecutors said something she found objectionable. Mostly, she looked at the back of Salman’s head. A few times, Salman turned around to flash Adieh a quick, nervous wave and a tight smile before her face returned to its standard sober expression.

As a child, Adieh said, Salman would let other kids take her toys rather than start a fight.

“She has no toughness in her,” she said. “She has a good heart. That’s her problem.”

Immediately after the Pulse shooting, Adieh flew to Florida to be with Salman. With approval from the FBI, Adieh brought Salman and her son back home to Mississippi. For four months, she cared for her traumatized cousin. Salman, an American-born daughter of Palestinian immigrants, struggled with the enormity of the destruction her husband had caused — 49 lives snuffed out in an instant — and worried how she and her son would survive in his infamous shadow, her cousin said.

While Salman was married to Mateen, she didn’t visit or talk much to her family. They said he discouraged it. But in Mississippi, she slowly told them everything. Mateen was violently abusive, she said: He beat her and forced her to have sex against her will. He controlled what money she spent, and even dictated what she was allowed to eat.

The Evidence

It was a typical Saturday night for Salman on June 11, 2016. Her husband told her he was going out with his friend Nemo, and said he’d be home later.

After he left, her mother-in-law called, inviting them to come to the mosque for dinner. Salman didn’t want to go; it was hot and she didn’t want to have to wear the hijab, she complained to a friend in a call at the time. She texted Mateen, asking him to tell his mom they weren’t coming.

“If ur mom calls say nimo invited you out and noor wants to stay home,” she wrote, misspelling Mateen’s friend’s nickname. This text would later be used as evidence for the crime of aiding and abetting. The prosecution said what she wrote was a cover story that Salman concocted to help her husband avoid suspicion from his parents.

But for Salman, she just wanted to have a quiet night with her son, according to the defense. She took him to Applebee’s for dinner and then to Walmart to pick up a Father’s Day present for Mateen. At home, after she put her son to sleep, she browsed for leather biker jackets on her phone and waited for her husband to come home.

He never did.

By 2:40 a.m., she tried calling, but there was no answer. Then she texted Mateen: “Habibi, where are you?” she wrote, using an Arabic term of endearment. She tried him again two hours later, reminding him that he had work in the morning.

Mateen wrote back at 4:28 a.m., asking her if she’d heard what happened. At that moment, he was holed up in a bathroom with hostages. Several minutes later, he would Google “how to remove bullet lodged in barrel?” His rifle had jammed. Within the hour he’d be dead, shot by the police.

“???” she answered. “What happened? !” She tried to call again, but he didn’t pick up.

Just minutes after she sent her husband that text, police were at her door, ordering her out of the house. She picked up her son and came outside. The police didn’t tell her why they were there; they asked her to wait in the back of a squad car while they searched her home. Then, she was whisked to the FBI headquarters in Fort Pierce for questioning.

She would spend the next 11 hours with law enforcement, without a lawyer.

FBI agents were immediately suspicious of her. She was strangely calm and passive, they testified, not asking a lot of questions about her predicament. The agents put her and her son in a large conference room, and assigned a female FBI agent to play with the child while Salman was questioned. After serving them McDonald’s hotcakes and hash browns for breakfast, FBI agents notified her that her husband was dead.

Her reaction to that news concerned them, too, they said. One agent claimed Salman didn’t cry, although another agent recalled her crying for five minutes straight, a contradiction that was never explained. Prosecutors described her as “staged and rehearsed.”

After hearing how Salman behaved at FBI headquarters that night, Campbell, the domestic violence expert, said it was not that unusual. Abuse victims, under pressure, often develop a flat affect and come off as disengaged. It’s a survival mechanism, she explained.

“When you are terrified of someone, you try not to be reactive to anything or let any of your feelings show,” she said. “You just try to obey and do whatever you think will please that person, or at least make them not hurt you.”

For hours and hours, FBI agents interrogated her, choosing not to film or record any of her statements. When asked in court about why the FBI did not record the interview of a potential suspect in a high-profile terrorist case, an agent said, “I honestly never thought about it. It never crossed my mind.”

At some point, getting nowhere with Salman, the FBI brought in a polygraph examiner and sent her son home with a relative.

On the stand, Special Agent Ricardo Enriquez described his interrogation of Salman. He falsely told her that he was sent by then-FBI Director James Comey, to impress upon her the gravity of the situation, he said. He asked her to sign a consent to be polygraphed, though he never used it. Instead, he just talked to her.

He asked her a series of questions about her husband and what she might have known about the attack. She told him she knew nothing, but over the next four and a half hours, Enriquez kept insisting that she knew more than she was letting on. He said that if she lied during the interview, he didn’t know what would happen to her son.

Salman was exhausted, having barely slept the night before – and in shock, her family and lawyers said. By the time she left FBI headquarters late in the afternoon, she had allegedly confessed to knowing about her husband’s plans.

Her statement, which was handwritten by Enriquez because she was too nervous to do it herself, claimed she knew Mateen was headed to Pulse that night to commit an attack, that she’d seen him look at the club’s website, and that they’d cased Pulse together the week before, driving around the venue slowly with the windows down.

“That’s what she said, and that’s what I wrote down,” Enriquez said.

But much of what she confessed to was impossible. Salman had never been in the vicinity of Pulse, according to cell phone and GPS data. Neither had Mateen. And none of their computers or phones showed a record of accessing Pulse’s website. The claims were simply untrue.

The defense said there was no way Salman knew where Mateen was headed that night because he didn’t know himself.

Pulse wasn’t actually Mateen’s intended target that night. He first drove to Disney Springs, a hub of shops and restaurants at Disney World, and found security to be tight. He then Googled “downtown orlando nightclubs” and appeared to pick the gay club at random. Despite initial speculation based on the location of the shooting, investigators found nothing to suggest he was motivated by homophobia.

But why would an innocent person confess to something she didn’t do?

Bruce Frumkin, a forensic psychologist who evaluated Salman with a series of personality tests, explained to the jury that people with certain traits – like mental illness, low intelligence and high rates of suggestibility ― may end up saying what the police want to hear. People who’ve been interviewed for long periods of time or have been deprived of sleep are particularly vulnerable to making false statements under pressure, he said.

In his professional opinion, Salman was “at much higher risk than the average person” to give a false confession, because of her extremely suggestible and submissive personality, and her low average IQ of 84, he testified.

Waiting To Find Out Her Fate

Inside the courtroom, Salman clutched a small resin guardian angel in her hand. It was too small to be seen by the jury or the judge. When testimony was painful to listen to, she squeezed it. The angel helped to ground her, her family spokesperson said.

Much of the presented evidence was graphic and stomach-churning. Salman could hardly watch as they played the video of the actual slaughter. There was her husband on the screen, mowing down all those innocent people. She turned her head away and cried, balling tissues in her fist.

For six days, Salman listened as prosecutors picked apart her life, depicting her as manipulative, materialistic and cruel. After prosecutors rested their case, they dropped a bombshell: Mateen’s father was an FBI informant up until the massacre, they said, and was under criminal investigation himself.

Upon learning this, Salman’s lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Paul Byron to toss the case, arguing that their entire defense strategy would have been different if they had known. He denied the request.

The defense’s case took just a day and a half. Salman’s lawyers called her friends and family to the stand to tell the jury what kind of person she was. One friend began crying when she saw Salman. She described how Salman helped her when she was struggling to care for an infant and study for school at the same time.

“She would offer to help me clean or cook, or give the bottle so I could concentrate on my studies,” she said. When asked if Salman was peaceful, she agreed vehemently.

“Nothing harmful would come out of her,” she added.

The defense also called two female witnesses who said they had romantic relationships with Mateen while he was married to Salman. He was a liar, her lawyers said, and he kept up a secret life. Why on earth would he tell his wife of his plans to commit terror?

On the very last day of trial, over 80 domestic violence and civil rights groups released a statement in support of Salman, saying the prosecution against her was “rooted in gendered Islamophobia and patriarchy.”

“She is being prosecuted under the guise of guilt by association as a Muslim woman married to a Muslim man who committed mass violence,” they wrote.

But whether the jury saw it that way is yet to be determined. They began deliberations on Wednesday afternoon. Salman faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Her family said the truth came out in the trial, and they have faith in the jury.

In closing arguments, Salman’s lawyer rejected the government’s depiction of Salman as diabolical and greedy, arguing that she didn’t know what her husband was planning, and she certainly didn’t help.

She was a “devoted mother. Not a monster,” her lawyer said.

She just married one.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...b04a59a313df85

[islamirama]

Orlando gunman’s widow says she was coerced into confessing she helped: report



The widow of Omar Mateen, the gunman in Orlando's 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, is reportedly arguing that federal agents coerced her into agreeing to a statement saying she had helped her late husband plan the attack.

Noor Salman, who is on trial facing charges of obstruction of justice and aiding in the support of a terror group, said on Wednesday that she could not have known about the attack on the gay nightclub, which left 49 people dead.

Salman was interrogated by FBI agents for 11 hours after the shooting, according to her defense attorney, Charles Swift. During the interrogation, Swift said, one of the agents produced a handwritten statement with phrases Salman would not have used.

The FBI agents did not record her using audio or video equipment, Reuters reported.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Sweeney said that Salman had helped her husband scope out potential locations for the shooting and later misled officials that questioned her about it, but Swift says she couldn't have known about the massacre in advance.

Prosecutors said that Salman had helped Mateen by telling his mother a cover story on the day he carried out the attack.

Salman's jury is currently deliberating.

If she’s convicted, she faces the possibility of life in prison.

On Monday, the judge presiding over the case refused a motion from the defense to declare a mistrial or dismiss the charges against Salman based on the fact that prosecutors had failed to disclose that Mateen’s father had been an FBI informant.

Salman initially told investigators that her husband’s actions were not known to her but later said that she knew he had left their home with a gun and had watched jihadist videos on the internet.

Prosecutors also noted that the shooter originally planned to target Disney World but then decided to go to Pulse.

http://thehill.com/homenews/news/380...helped-husband

---

Noor Salman, Widow of Pulse Killer Omar Mateen, Is Found Not Guilty of All Charges



In an Orlando courtroom this morning, a 12-person jury, after three days of deliberation, found Noor Salman, the widow of Pulse attacker Omar Mateen, not guilty on all charges. Salman had been accused of providing material support of terrorism, based on the accusation that she aided her deceased husband in the 2016 Pulse attack, as well as obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to the FBI. She will now be a free woman.

As The Intercept has been reporting, the prosecution of Salman was bizarre and dubious from the start. Salman has no history of any political or religious radicalism, and was a victim of her husband’s violent abuse, not his partner or collaborator. Worse, Justice Department prosecutors got caught lying to the court, by telling the judge — when successfully demanding that Salman be held for the last year without bail — that she had “cased” the Pulse nightclub with her husband, an assertion the FBI quickly determined was false.

DOJ prosecutors also hid the fact that Omar’s father, Seddique Mateen, had been an FBI informant since 2005. It now seems clear that the FBI did not previously arrest the younger Mateen in 2013, after they investigated him, out of deference to his father, with whom they were working directly. Salman’s lawyers suggested that the reason for prosecuting Salman was to scapegoat her for the attack.

Salman had never gone to Pulse, nor had her husband until the night of the attack. Indeed, it became conclusively clear at the trial that, contrary to initial reports, not only had Mateen never been to Pulse, but he also chose it at random only after he found his original targets — including the Disney Springs shopping complex and other nearby tourist attractions — too fortified to attack. Targeting LGBT people was not part of his motive; allegiance to the Islamic State and a perceived need to retaliate for the U.S. killing of Muslim civilians abroad was.

Evidence demonstrates that he chose Pulse randomly without even knowing it catered to the gay community. As Huffington Post’s Melissa Jeltsen put it, after reporting daily from Salman’s trial, “Everything we’ve heard in court suggests Mateen picked Pulse randomly — not because of animus towards the LGBT community.”

It is hard to overstate what a rare event this acquittal is. To begin with, the DOJ’s prosecution rested almost exclusively on a confession they got Salman to sign after many hours of detained interrogation on the morning after the attack. That “confession” was not something that Salman wrote herself, but rather one that FBI agents wrote for her based on their claims about what she said during the interrogation (an interrogation that they chose not to record).

Despite all the science and data showing how often the FBI coerces false confessions — by preying on the vulnerabilities and duress of people after a crime is committed (testimony showed that Salman has a low IQ and resides at the high end of suggestibility ratings, and was threatened with the loss of her young son) — it is exceedingly rare for juries to acquit a defendant who signed such a statement.

Yet jurors obviously concluded that the statement the FBI induced her to sign was unreliable. That conclusion was certainly due, in large part, to the fact that the FBI itself concluded that key parts of the “confession” they had her sign — including the claim that she had “cased” Pulse with her husband — turned out to be demonstrably false.


But the shocking rarity of this verdict extends far beyond the limited issue of coerced false confessions. As someone who has covered the issue of post-9/11 civil liberties erosions going back to the Bush administration, I’ve come to automatically expect that any charges relating to terrorism — especially when lodged against a Muslim defendant — will result in a conviction no matter how weak and manipulative the prosecution’s case is.

Between the pro-prosecution judges who now fill the federal court system, the ease of exploiting American jurors’ anti-Muslim sentiments, and the extremely broad parameters of terrorism laws, the deck is stacked against defendants in terrorism cases — especially Muslim defendants such as Salman.

The data confirms the validity of this expectation. In a two-year project, The Intercept collected and analyzed profiles of the 850 terrorism defendants prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice since 9/11, and it gives the full picture. The note at the top reveals how overzealous the prosecutions have been: “The U.S. government has prosecuted 850 people for terrorism since the 9/11 attacks. Most of them never even got close to committing an act of violence.”

Despite that, defendants in such cases have stood little chance of success. Convictions have been a virtual certainty. The statistics prior to Salman’s acquittal today speak for themselves, and convey how dire the playing field has been:

Since the 9/11 attacks, most of the 850 terrorism defendants prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice have been charged with material support for terrorism, criminal conspiracy, immigration violations, or making false statements — vague, nonviolent offenses that give prosecutors wide latitude for scoring quick convictions or plea bargains. 552 defendants have pleaded guilty to charges, while the courts found 183 guilty at trial. Just 2 have been acquitted and 3 have seen their charges dropped or dismissed, giving the Justice Department a near-perfect record of conviction in terrorism cases.

More amazingly still, the only two terrorism-related acquittals prior to today happened in 2006, when two defendants accused of being Al Qaeda operatives were found not guilty in the same case on charges of sedition and importing weapons. It took 12 years to finally get another acquittal.

While Salman’s acquittal should be a cause for celebration for anyone who cares about basic justice and civil liberties, justice will not be truly served in this case until punishment is doled out to the prosecutors who purposely hid key facts from the court in order to keep her imprisoned for a full year, along with meaningful reforms to prevent future FBI deceit and manipulation regarding interrogations.

One of the reasons prosecutors feel so free to lie, and one of the reasons the U.S. imprisons more of its citizens than any other country in the world, is because an ethos of impunity has been vested in prosecutors, whereby they are protected from all punishment — even when they deliberately engage in egregious misconduct that causes people to be unjustly imprisoned.

That is clearly the case here: The judge himself recognized that he was misled by prosecutors for a full year. If ordinary citizens lie to the FBI, they go to prison; if defense lawyers mislead a court with even a fraction of the culpability as these prosecutors are guilty of in this case, they are severely sanctioned, if not referred for disbarment. It is unconscionable to allow these prosecutors to go unpunished for what they did to Salman; they are the ones who obstructed justice here. And if the judge in this case has any self-respect or dignity — a big “if” for a federal judge when it comes to terrorism prosecutors — he will not allow them to have deceived him without consequences.

Beyond that, the FBI’s practice of interrogating witnesses without recording them should come to an end. Recording technology is obviously cheap and easy to use. There is no excuse for relying on the assertions of FBI agents about what witnesses say when recordings are far more reliable. “The FBI must join the rest of law enforcement and record all statements,” one of Salman’s attorneys, Charles Swift, told the press after the acquittal was announced. “It’s ridiculous if they don’t.”

Salman’s acquittal is undoubtedly due, in part, to the fact that, unlike so many Muslims terrorism defendants, she had outstanding defense lawyers representing her, led by former U.S. Navy officer Swift, who successfully represented Guantanamo Bay defendants all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court (and whose military career was killed because of it). But other terrorism defendants with highly skilled counsel have nonetheless been convicted despite a dearth of evidence, because of how tilted the playing field is against them.

Perhaps this case is just an aberration, a byproduct of a sympathetic defendant who was clearly more a victim of her abusive husband than an accomplice with him. But the more optimistic view is that 16 years after the 9/11 attack, some rationality and balance is finally emerging when it comes to the intersection of terrorism fears, security claims, and justice.

The fact that many journalists and others who closely reported on this case saw that the prosecution was so flawed, yet nonetheless fully expected a conviction, highlights the unjust dynamic that has prevailed. Along with celebrating this rare instance where justice has been served by the U.S. judicial system, one should hope that this verdict portends a return of sober reason and a commitment to due process, even when the scary specter of terrorism and Muslim defendants are waved around.

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/30/...f-all-charges/


Glenn Greenwald: Omar Mateen's wife, Noor Salman, was just found NOT GUILTY on all charges relating to the attack on the Pulse nightclub. As someone who has covered terrorism and the post-9/11 attack on the civil liberties of Muslims for more than a decade, I'm as shocked as I am ecstatic!!! The rarest of events: actual justice served in the US court system in a terrorism case!!!

[islamirama]

The prosecution of Noor Salman was a traumatizing example of sexist Islamophobia

The acquittal of Omar Mateen's widow is justice for a woman victimized by a killer and then by the system.

Mar.31.2018

When the jury acquitted Noor Salman on all charges on Friday in her trial for aiding and abetting Omar Mateen, her husband, in the 2016 Pulse massacre and obstruction of justice for allegedly providing conflicting statements to the FBI, it was indeed good news. She had been in solitary confinement for the past year, allowed one phone call a day with her young son, and faced the possibility of spending the rest of her life in prison for the crimes of the man she has accused of domestic violence.

But for many women, it is chilling to know this prosecution was even allowed to take place: The terrible tragedy at Pulse was exploited by a deceitful prosecution and the FBI to depict Salman as a terrorist supporter, when she was no more and no less than a survivor of domestic abuse at the hands of a mass shooter.

While we all want justice after the mass shooting at Pulse that killed 49 people and wounded many others, targeting Noor Salman was no kind of recompense for the community in Orlando. Instead, Salman’s prosecution was rooted in gendered Islamophobia; Muslim women are too often depicted as being terrorist sympathizers or supporters because of being Muslim.

But during Salman’s trial, even the prosecution admitted there was no evidence that she was ever radicalized or supported any terrorist organization. Even the confession the prosecution touted as evidence was misleading. The confession was written by an FBI agent who interrogated Salman for 11 hours with no legal counsel, accompanied by threats that they would take her son away from her and place him in a Christian home.

Another component of gendered Islamophobia is the trope that Muslim women are submissive, oppressed and consent to domestic abuse and violence as part of our Muslim identity. The government’s prosecution was rooted in this logic: Prosecutors refused to take into account that Salman was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of Mateen as opposed to his collaborator. As reported in the New York Times, Noor was abused, raped and isolated from her family, yet the prosecution depicted Salman as a greedy terrorist supporter — even though it was stated at trial that Mateen only gave her $20 each week and controlled her every movement.

After surviving the violence and isolation to which Mateen subjected her, the FBI and the prosecution added to her trauma by charging her with complicity in his crimes, incarcerating her, separating her from her child and subjecting her to prolonged solitary confinement.

Her prosecution continued the cycle of dehumanization and terror Salman experienced in her marriage to Mateen. And, in today’s climate of Islamophobia and the War on Terror, her prosecution has alarming repercussions for Muslim women and for all survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault who are criminalized for the actions of their abusive partners.

It is hopeful that a system which has often found Muslims guilty of material support charges without the presence of strong evidence, let alone a system that continues to criminalize survivors of abuse, acquitted Noor Salman. Still, given the barriers faced by formerly incarcerated people and those publicly associated with Muslims who are terrorists, Salman will need the support of our communities to rebuild, heal and live with a minimum of stigma and shame. She is also a victim of the mass murderer who took so many lives at Pulse, and has much healing to do.

But we additionally need to hold institutions like the FBI and prosecutors accountable for destroying the lives of survivors of abuse in their pursuit of a living person to blame for the terrible actions of a dead one. Perhaps, at least, this acquittal — if not the trauma of the prosecution itself — will give prosecutors and investigators pause before they use guilt by association as a standard for targeting Muslim women like Noor Salman.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinio...bia-ncna861651