Orlando, Florida: The wife of the gunman who killed 49 people at an Orlando gay nightclub knew of his plans for the attack and could soon be charged in connection with the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, a law enforcement source said on Tuesday.
The source told Reuters that a federal grand jury had been convened and could charge Omar Mateen's wife, Noor Zahi Salman, as early as Wednesday. "It appears she had some knowledge of what was going on," said U.S. Senator Angus King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which received a briefing on the attack on Tuesday.
"She definitely is, I guess you would say, a person of interest right now and appears to be cooperating and can provide us with some important information," King told CNN.
Wife drove shooter
Salman told the FBI that she had driven him to the Pulse nightclub at some point before the attack and that she had also been with him when he purchased ammunition, the official said.
But she also said she had tried to talk him out of waging an attack, the official said.
Her statements were first reported by NBC News.
CNN, quoting an unnamed law-enforcement official, reported on Tuesday that Noor Salman told the FBI that Omar Mateen said he wanted to carry out a jihadist attack, though she denied knowledge of his plans to launch the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
FBI investigators don't believe Noor Salman was a co-conspirator in the attack that killed 49 people Sunday morning at Pulse, the source said.
"There's an indication that she was with him in certain parts of the process, and we're sorting through it," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was at an early stage. "We don't know what's true and what's not."
Salman is not in custody, the official said.
Allegiance
Mateen, who was shot dead by police after a three-hour standoff at the Pulse club early on Sunday, called 911 during his shooting spree to profess allegiance to various militant groups.
Federal investigators have said he was likely self-radicalised and there was no evidence that he received any instructions or aid from outside groups such as Daesh, the so-called Islamic State. Mateen, 29, was a U.S. citizen, born in New York of Afghan immigrant parents.
‘Angry, disturbed, unstable’
"He appears to have been an angry, disturbed, unstable young man who became radicalised," President Barack Obama told reporters.
Mateen, who was a security guard, was systematic during his rampage, working his way through the packed club shooting people who were already down. He apparently wanted to ensure they were dead, said Angel Colon, a wounded survivor.
"I look over and he shoots the girl next to me and I was just there laying down and thinking: 'I'm next, I'm dead,'" he said.
Mateen shot him twice more, one bullet apparently aimed for Colon's head striking his hand, and another hitting his hip, Colon said at Orlando Regional Medical Center, where he is one of 27 survivors being treated.
Accessory
US media, citing an FBI source, said prosecutors were seeking to charge Mateen's wife as an accessory to 49 counts of murder and 53 counts of attempted murder and failure to notify law enforcement about the pending attack and lying to federal agents.
NBC News said Salman told federal agents she tried to talk her husband out of carrying out the attack. But she also told the FBI she once drove him to the Pulse nightclub because he wanted to scope it out, the network said.
Salman's mother, Ekbal Zahi Salman, lives in a middle-class neighborhood of the suburban town of Rodeo, California. A neighbor said Noor Salman only visited her mother once after she married Mateen.
Noor Salman's mother "didn't like him very much. He didn't allow her (Noor) to come here," said neighbor Rajinder Chahal. He said he had spoken to Noor Salman's mother after the Orlando attack. "She was crying, weeping."
His former wife, meanwhile, said Mateen was physically abusive towards her, had mental health issues and was “obviously disturbed, deeply, and traumatised”.
Sitora Yusifiy was married to Mateen for four months in 2009 until her family was forced to “literally rescue me” after he kept her “hostage”, she said on Sunday in Colorado.
“In the beginning he was a normal being that cared about family, loved to joke, loved to have fun,” Yusifiy said of Mateen, whom she had met online. “A few months after we were married I saw his instability, I saw his bipolar, and he would get mad out of nowhere, and that’s when I started worrying about my safety.
“Then after a few months he started abusing me physically, very often, and not allowing me to speak to my family, and keeping me hostage from them,” she said.
She said her family arrived to rescue her from Mateen “and had to pull me out of his arms”.
Wife's family speaks up
In Northern California, neighbours of Salman's family gave a similar account of Mateen's controlling ways. Salman's mother, Ekbal Zahi Salman, had complained to a neighbour that Noor Zahi Salman, her eldest daughter, wanted to come home to visit her parents and younger sisters but that Mateen had forbidden her.
Only once did he allow her to return to her family home in Rodeo, a San Francisco suburb, and that was a few years ago when her father was dying, neighbours said.
Jasbinder Chahal, a friend of the family who lives across the street, said that, not long ago, Salman's mother had told her that Salman, her young son and Mateen went to Disney World, in Orlando.
On Monday night, Chahal said, she visited the Salman house and found the mother crying.
"She can't contact her daughter," Chahal said. "She doesn't know where she is. She's texting, and she's not returning her texts."
Salman grew up in a devout Muslim family originally from a Palestinian community, and every summer the family returned there.
This was Noor Zahi Salman's second marriage.
Hardeep Ahluwalia, another neighbour, said that, years ago, the family had rented out its house, returning to the Middle East.
It was around that time, he said, that Salman's parents arranged a marriage for her. She may have been 19 or 20, Chahal said. The marriage did not work out.
Chahal said that inside the Salmans' avocado-coloured two-story home, Salman's mother had kept a close watch on her four daughters, driving them to school and picking them up.
