UPDATE - Is this the 'accomplice' referenced below? The new wife? If this bulletin is true, trying to talk your spouse out of a massacre as he deliberately makes preparations to carry it out does not absolve you from moral culpability:
NBC NEWS: Orlando gunman's wife told FBI she tried to talk him out of conducting an attack -@PeteWilliamsNBC https://t.co/PTq0ZcPMtn
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 14, 2016
--- Original Post ---
Hmm. This report from a local news station started circulating late last night on Twitter, but hasn't gotten much play elsewhere. Did the Pulse nightclub attacker have help? It seems virtually impossible that there was an active accomplice during the shooting itself, but perhaps somebody else was in league with him prior to the massacre. Here's the WFTV Eyewitness News clip, apparently based on discussions with local authorities:
#BREAKING: Arrest to be made soon of alleged accomplice in #PulseShooting #WFTV @KRayWFTV pic.twitter.com/bNS5UEGYW2
— WFTV Eyewitness News (@WFTV) June 13, 2016
FBI Director James Comey told the media yesterday, "we see no indication that this was a plot directed from outside the United States and we see no indication that he was part of any kind of network." Does that statement explicitly exclude the possibility that at least one other person may have had some involvement in the planning or execution of the massacre? Allahpundit notes a Fox News reports that the killer is believed to have been a follower of a radical Islamist preacher who was recently released from prison, over officials' warnings that he'd recruit jihadists. “It is no coincidence that this happened in Orlando,” one source told Fox. And as Leah wrote earlier, a plugged-in member of Congress said he'd be "shocked" if the terrorist were truly a lone wolf (via the Hugh Hewitt Show):
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I mean, I can say that this individual didn’t wake up on Friday morning and radicalize himself in 24 hours. It’s a much longer process than that. Speaking of myself, I’ll be shocked if there weren’t others involved with this. I’ll be even more surprised if there weren’t some people around him that weren’t, to some level, aware of his intentions and could have warned us. And once again, what type of communications did he have with these individuals and perhaps others overseas? There’s a lot to learn.
Meanwhile, on CNN last night, the shooter's ex-wife, whom he allegedly brutalized, suggested that he may have struggled with his own sexuality in secret:
"When we had gotten married, he confessed to me about his past ... that he very much enjoyed going to clubs and the nightlife, and there was a lot of pictures of him," Sitora Yusufiy told CNN Tuesday from Denver. "I feel like it's a side of him or a part of him that he lived, but probably didn't want everybody to know about." The comments follow reports from customers at the gay nightclub that shooter Omar Mateen was seen there regularly. One told The Associated Press that Mateen tried to pick up men there. Asked whether she thinks her ex-husband was gay, Yusufiy said: "I don't know. He never personally or physically made any indications while we were together of that. But he did feel very strongly about homosexuality." She says it's possible he hid feelings about being gay.
Multiple witnesses said they'd seen the terrorist at Pulse on numerous previous occasions, while another individual told New York's ABC 7 that Mateen had contacted him through a gay dating app: "Kevin West said the shooter, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, contacted him three months ago through a dating app called Jack'd. 'When he first contacted me, he was saying things like, 'What clubs are popping and things of that sort, what are good places to go?' West said." Perhaps the jihadist was merely scouting out his target (would that require "many" trips?), or perhaps there was a layer of self-loathing that led him to unleash his ISIS-inspired destruction against gays (as opposed to Disney World, for example), and this club in particular.
UPDATE II - New details:
Source: Orlando attacker’s ties to American suicide bomber in Syria ‘deeper’ than thought: https://t.co/6rnPcHmwmC pic.twitter.com/JUJBPHcypk
— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 14, 2016
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