ORLANDO, FLORIDA — New court filings in the legal case against Noor Salman, the widow of Pulse Nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, have revealed that the gunman’s father was a confidential FBI informant for over a decade, up until the very same month that the deadly shooting took place. The stunning revelation has again placed the role of FBI in domestic terror attacks under scrutiny, especially after the recent school shooting in Parkland where the FBI repeatedly ignored dozens of warnings about the shooter prior to the tragedy.
According to court documents, Seddique Mateen worked as an FBI informant from 2005 to June 2016 and allegedly used his clout with the nation’s top law enforcement agency to block a 2013 investigation into the behavior of his son, three years before he shot up a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing nearly 50 people. During that time, Omar Mateen’s name was also removed from the “no-fly list” and FBI terror watch list.
However, Seddique Mateen was much more than a typical FBI informant, as revealed by his shady dealings abroad. Investigators reportedly found receipts of sizable money transfers to Turkey and Afghanistan during the first part of 2016, which also continued through early June. He had also worked to raise up to $100,000 to fund terror attacks against the Pakistani government. This news is especially troubling, given that his son allegedly committed the massacre after having pledged allegiance to Daesh (ISIS), a terrorist group with direct ties to Turkey and an active presence in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Court documents reveal that Seddique Mateen worked as an FBI informant from 2005 to June 2016,
Despite Seddique Mateen’s dubious role as a FBI informant and his attempts to fund attacks abroad, only Omar Mateen’s wife has been charged in connection with the mass shooting, even though she claims to have learned about the shooting hours after it took place. Salman would face life in prison if convicted. Yet, given the recent revelations about Omar’s father, her defense has asked for the judge overseeing the case to declare a mistrial, based on the fact that the government failed to disclose the FBI’s relationship with Seddique Mateen.
FBI playing arsonist and firefighter?
The stunning revelations about Omar Mateen’s father and his relationship to the FBI has again brought the law enforcement agency under scrutiny, both for its role in foiling domestic terror plots it directly creates and for connections to the alleged perpetrators of the worst mass killings to occur in the United States in recent years. Indeed, as journalist Trevor Aaronson has noted, the FBI has adopted the “proactive” approach of fomenting and then “busting” domestic terror plots, including bombings and mass shootings, in order to justify the billions of dollars it spends every year “fighting terrorists.” The result has been the creation of a network of more than 15,000 informants who infiltrate Muslim communities to create false terror plots.
These include the case of 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud, to whom the FBI spent months offering encouragement, support and money in an effort to convince him to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon in 2010 — only to arrest him at the last moment and celebrate the success of the bureau’s “counter-terrorism efforts.” Then, a year later, the FBI yet again “saved” the United States from its own manufactured terrorist plot by arresting 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus, after spending months providing him with plans and materials to attack the Pentagon, U.S. troops in Iraq, and the Capitol Building using “remote-controlled” and explosive-ridden model airplanes.
Related
- FBI Tried To Lure Orlando Shooter Into Terror Plot In 2013
- Beyond ISIS: Orlando Mass Killing Is About Much, Much More Than ‘Radical Islam’
- FBI Told Orlando Shooter’s Wife Not To Tell US Media He Was Gay
- How G4S Tolerated The Homophobic Hatred Of Orlando’s IS Terrorist
In addition, the FBI has either been in direct communication with or well aware of shooters and domestic terrorists prior to recent mass killings. For instance, a FBI interview released last year revealed that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers, spoke about having been contacted by four FBI agents prior to the Boston attacks, supporting claims of his mother that the FBI had been following and monitoring the entire Tsarnaev family for years.
More recently, the FBI ignored warnings about the Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz, despite the fact that the police had been called to his home 39 times over the last seven years and he was reported to the FBI on several occasions leading up to the shooting, including Cruz’s own online admission that he sought to become a “professional” school shooter.
Amid renewed calls to give the FBI more money and power, these resources would likely be funneled into creating more FBI-brokered domestic terror plots and would do little to change the outcome of some shootings — such as that carried out by Omar Mateen, who was able to slip under the FBI’s radar owing to his father’s connections and the agency’s own glaring conflict of interest.
Top Photo | Seddique Mir Mateen, father of Omar Mateen, the Pulse nightclub killer who died in a gun battle with a SWAT team, gestures as he walks towards reporters, across the street of a residence owned by the family, Wednesday, June 15, 2016, in Fort Pierce, Fla. (AP/Alan Diaz)
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News who has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, the Anti-Media, and 21st Century Wire among others. She currently lives in Southern Chile.
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