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ORLANDO: The US government has revealed that the Pulse nightclub shooter’s father was a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant for 11 years before the attack, lawyers for his widow said on Monday.
They said prosecutors told them in an email on Saturday that the government found evidence on the day of the attack that Omar Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, had been sending money to Afghanistan and Turkey, and that he was accused of raising money to fund violence against the government of Pakistan.
Noor Salman’s lawyers say that this new information shared only after prosecutors rested their case should result in a mistrial or an outright dismissal of the charges against her. She is accused of helping her husband plan the June 2016 attack at the gay nightclub in Orlando, where he killed 49 people.
Her lawyers say the government’s belated disclosure has prevented them from exploring the possibilities that Mateen was more directly involved, and that Ms Salman may have been framed to hide the government’s mistakes. It is clear that the federal government’s failure to disclose these details was to keep her from getting a fair trial, her attorneys said.
The government’s “violations in this case have placed Ms Salman, the jury, and the court in a dark wood where the search for truth has been thwarted,” they wrote.
Her lawyers’ federal court motion, which was filed on Monday, said that US Attorney Sara Sweeney sent them an email on Saturday revealing some details of the FBI’s involvement with and knowledge of Mateen’s activities leading up to the Pulse attack. “I have just received authorisation to disclose the following information about Mateen,” her email said, adding that “he was a FBI confidential human source at various points in time between January 2005 and June 2016”.
This email was sent after jurors heard Shahla Mateen deny during cross-examination that her husband had any relationship with the FBI.
The email also revealed other details the prosecution didn’t tell jurors before resting its case against Ms Salman, including the discovery in the hours after the shooting that “receipts for money transfers to Turkey and Afghanistan” made in the days and weeks before the shooting were found at Mateen’s home, and that in 2012, an anonymous tipster had accused him of “seeking to raise $50,000 — $100,000 via a donation drive to contribute towards an attack against the government of Pakistan”.
Defence attorneys say the failure to share this information in advance of her trial violates Ms Salman’s Fifth Amendment right to due process and Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial, because her defence would have investigated “whether Mateen’s father was involved in or had foreknowledge of the Pulse attack,” they wrote.
Prosecutors told the jury that Ms Salman knew Omar Mateen was buying rounds of ammunition for his AR-15, helped him spend thousands of dollars before the attack and knew about his plan when he left their home in the hours before the shooting. They also say she lied, tried to mislead FBI agents and had knowledge of her husband’s sick fascination with violent jihadist videos and terrorism.
But defense attorneys describe Ms Salman as a simple woman with a low IQ, who was abused emotionally, mentally and physically by her husband. This latest evidence, they say, points instead to Mateen’s father as a potential accomplice.
“Alternatively, the FBI’s purported interviews with Ms Salman were directed to evading the negligence they exercised with their own informant,” the motion says, and “to finding an additional culprit rather than their own informant”.
Former federal prosecutor David S. Weinstein agreed that if the defence had this information about Mateen’s father before trial, they could have planted doubt in the minds of jurors that Ms Salman was ever involved. The defense began presenting its case on Monday, and at this point the judge will likely keep the trial going while he evaluates the motion, he said.
Ahmed Bedier, president of the civil rights advocacy group United Voices, has been attending the trial in support of Ms Salman. He said her family had suspected Mateen might have been working with the FBI, but they lacked evidence to support this. Mr Bedier also noted that when Mateen was interviewed by the FBI in 2013 and not charged with false statements or any other crime, it enabled him to legally secure the firearms he used in the Pulse attack.
“They chose to protect their own informant and their own connection to Omar Mateen,” Bedier said. “The fact that his father was an informant for 11 years, and the FBI interviewed him in 2013, there’s suspicion now that it’s because of the father that the government closed that case.”
As for Mateen, the government had listed him as a potential witness in February, but did not make him testify before resting its case. The wording of the Saturday email, cited by the defense in its motion, suggests the government still doesn’t want him to talk too much in front of the jury: “If you should call S. Mateen to the stand, the government will not seek to elicit any of this information from him,” Ms Sweeney wrote.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1397817/orlando-club-gunmans-dad-was-fbi-informant-court-reveals
They said prosecutors told them in an email on Saturday that the government found evidence on the day of the attack that Omar Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, had been sending money to Afghanistan and Turkey, and that he was accused of raising money to fund violence against the government of Pakistan.
Noor Salman’s lawyers say that this new information shared only after prosecutors rested their case should result in a mistrial or an outright dismissal of the charges against her. She is accused of helping her husband plan the June 2016 attack at the gay nightclub in Orlando, where he killed 49 people.
Her lawyers say the government’s belated disclosure has prevented them from exploring the possibilities that Mateen was more directly involved, and that Ms Salman may have been framed to hide the government’s mistakes. It is clear that the federal government’s failure to disclose these details was to keep her from getting a fair trial, her attorneys said.
The government’s “violations in this case have placed Ms Salman, the jury, and the court in a dark wood where the search for truth has been thwarted,” they wrote.
Her lawyers’ federal court motion, which was filed on Monday, said that US Attorney Sara Sweeney sent them an email on Saturday revealing some details of the FBI’s involvement with and knowledge of Mateen’s activities leading up to the Pulse attack. “I have just received authorisation to disclose the following information about Mateen,” her email said, adding that “he was a FBI confidential human source at various points in time between January 2005 and June 2016”.
This email was sent after jurors heard Shahla Mateen deny during cross-examination that her husband had any relationship with the FBI.
The email also revealed other details the prosecution didn’t tell jurors before resting its case against Ms Salman, including the discovery in the hours after the shooting that “receipts for money transfers to Turkey and Afghanistan” made in the days and weeks before the shooting were found at Mateen’s home, and that in 2012, an anonymous tipster had accused him of “seeking to raise $50,000 — $100,000 via a donation drive to contribute towards an attack against the government of Pakistan”.
Defence attorneys say the failure to share this information in advance of her trial violates Ms Salman’s Fifth Amendment right to due process and Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial, because her defence would have investigated “whether Mateen’s father was involved in or had foreknowledge of the Pulse attack,” they wrote.
Prosecutors told the jury that Ms Salman knew Omar Mateen was buying rounds of ammunition for his AR-15, helped him spend thousands of dollars before the attack and knew about his plan when he left their home in the hours before the shooting. They also say she lied, tried to mislead FBI agents and had knowledge of her husband’s sick fascination with violent jihadist videos and terrorism.
But defense attorneys describe Ms Salman as a simple woman with a low IQ, who was abused emotionally, mentally and physically by her husband. This latest evidence, they say, points instead to Mateen’s father as a potential accomplice.
“Alternatively, the FBI’s purported interviews with Ms Salman were directed to evading the negligence they exercised with their own informant,” the motion says, and “to finding an additional culprit rather than their own informant”.
Former federal prosecutor David S. Weinstein agreed that if the defence had this information about Mateen’s father before trial, they could have planted doubt in the minds of jurors that Ms Salman was ever involved. The defense began presenting its case on Monday, and at this point the judge will likely keep the trial going while he evaluates the motion, he said.
Ahmed Bedier, president of the civil rights advocacy group United Voices, has been attending the trial in support of Ms Salman. He said her family had suspected Mateen might have been working with the FBI, but they lacked evidence to support this. Mr Bedier also noted that when Mateen was interviewed by the FBI in 2013 and not charged with false statements or any other crime, it enabled him to legally secure the firearms he used in the Pulse attack.
“They chose to protect their own informant and their own connection to Omar Mateen,” Bedier said. “The fact that his father was an informant for 11 years, and the FBI interviewed him in 2013, there’s suspicion now that it’s because of the father that the government closed that case.”
As for Mateen, the government had listed him as a potential witness in February, but did not make him testify before resting its case. The wording of the Saturday email, cited by the defense in its motion, suggests the government still doesn’t want him to talk too much in front of the jury: “If you should call S. Mateen to the stand, the government will not seek to elicit any of this information from him,” Ms Sweeney wrote.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1397817/orlando-club-gunmans-dad-was-fbi-informant-court-reveals
