The trial of Noor Salman, widow of the Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, has made public a handful of startling revelations. Salman is accused of aiding late her husband who murdered 49 people. She’s also, “charged with obstruction and providing material support to a terrorist organization.”
Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS and was killed by police after the attack. The incident was used by anti-gun activists to push for more gun control.
First, it was disclosed that Mateen’s father had worked as an FBI informant from 2005 to 2016. As a result, Salman’s attorneys requested a mistrial that was denied.
Wednesday, it was revealed that contrary to previous reporting, Mateen had not intentionally selected the gay nightclub as a theater for mass murder, but sought a Plan B after cops spooked him away from his original target — Disney World. Put in other terms, Mateen was deterred by armed guards and so headed for a gun-free zone.
According to NBC News, Mateen hid a gun in a stroller and planned to shoot up Disney World’s shopping and entertainment complex.
Sweeney said Salman didn’t know that Mateen was going to the Pulse nightclub on the night of the attack — she thought he was at Disney World. They two had visited Disney in the days before the attack, according to one of her statements to federal authorities.”The target of that terrorist attack was not the Pulse nightclub,” Sweeney said. “The target of the attack was Disney.”Sweeney showed a video of the Disney Springs complex that captured Mateen walking near the House of Blues club in the hours before the Pulse attack. In it, he looks behind him at police officers standing nearby.”He had to choose a new target,” she said….Sweeney also said that Mateen had bought a baby stroller and doll at Walmart on June 11 — the day before the attack — and had a plan to hide a gun in the stroller while going to Disney.
As for Salman’s case, the accusations that she mislead federal authorities include:
Sweeney said Salman “knowingly engaged in misleading conduct” when she spoke to the FBI in the hours after the attack.Prosecutors said she claimed her husband didn’t use the internet in their home, but he did. She also told investigators that Mateen had deactivated his Facebook account in 2013, but investigators found that he had an account up until the month of the shooting and was friends with his wife. She said her husband only had one gun when he had three, and that he wasn’t radicalized even though prosecutors said he spent time watching beheading videos and looking at ISIS sites.
Salman’s trial concluded Wednesday and the jury is still in deliberations:
Jurors deliberating in the trial of the Orlando nightclub shooter’s wife have examined a statement that she made to the FBI in the hours after the attack that killed 49 people in 2016.The jury asked to review the statement a couple of hours into their discussions in the trial of Noor Salman. They will resume deliberations at 9 a.m. Thursday.Her attorneys fought to keep the statement out of the trial. They say it was coerced and she signed it because she was tired and feared losing her young son. Prosecutors say it showed she knew about the attack and did nothing to stop it.
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