Grand Jury Weighs Charges Against Orlando Shooter’s Wife, Sources Say

Prosecutors have convened a grand jury to investigate Noor Salman, wife of gunman Omar Mateen, sources quoted by Fox News and Reuters say.

NBC News is reporting that Salman tried to talk her husband out of the attack and that she was with him when he visited Pulse Nightclub.

Also Thursday, CNN reported that Mateen’s wife suspected he was going to carry out an attack that night, even though he told her he was going out to see a friend.

The new details indicate that the attack on Pulse nightclub may not have been random, and that Mateen was actually well-acquainted with the club where he opened fire on Sunday morning, killing 49 people and wounding 53 others.

An official familiar with the case says investigators are reluctant to charge Salman simply for possibly knowing about the attack in advance.

“They should eliminate and find a solution to get rid of the ISIS”, Mateen, a fringe political commentator who has appeared on a U.S.-based Afghan satellite channel, said Wednesday in a rambling press conference outside his family’s home in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents are interviewing men who claim to have had contact with Mateen online or in person, examining whether Mateen was gay and whether self-loathing about his repressed sexuality, rather than his declared allegiance to foreign militant extremists, was a motive in carrying out the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Salman allegedly told investigators that she drove Mateen to Pulse, a popular gay club in Orlando, about a week before Sunday’s shooting, suggesting that the gunman had identified the target for some time before moving forward.

In 2006, Mateen attempted to join the police, and a colleague in his academy class said he believed Mateen was gay.

Mateen’s rampage at Pulse was systematic as he worked his way through the packed club shooting people who were already down, apparently to ensure they were killed, said Angel Colon, a wounded survivor.

Mateen made at least one other phone call during the standoff to an acquaintance in Florida, according to two US law enforcement officials.

The FBI has given intelligence bulletins to gay clubs in the Orlando area to give them a heightened sense of awareness, Hopper said.

“I did it for ISIS”, the caller said, according to Gentili, “I did it for the Islamic State”.

The FBI has acknowledged it first became aware of Omar Mateen in 2013.

That visit may have overlapped with Gay Days Orlando, an annual event that brings thousands of LGBT people to central Florida, the newspaper reported, citing a USA law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.

But Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, said his son didn’t have ties to the terror gruop – which he calls “the enemy of humanity”.

The official said investigators had been told that Mateen and his wife had been at the nightclub on a prior occasion and were trying to confirm the accuracy of that statement.