Orlando Shooter Mateen Became Radicalized, Visited Saudi Arabia

Omar Mateen, the man accused in the shooting deaths of 49 people and wounding of 53 others at an Orlando night club for gays, had previously amicably worked and socialized with lesbians and homosexuals while on the job at a local restaurant. He later became radicalized, visiting Saudi Arabia twice, all while working for a global British security conglomerate.

Having been born and raised in New York, Mateen received “an associate degree in criminal justice technology” from Indian River State College in Florida, in 2006, according to the New York Times, with the intent of going into law enforcement. At that time, Mateen was described as a “jokester,” someone who “always had a smile on his face.” Samuel King, who went to high school with Mateen, couldn’t believe it was the same person he knew. He was a jokester and at the time didnt have an issue with the LGBT community, King posted on his Facebook page today. “He might’ve even sat down at the bar and had a drink and laughed with the bartenders, knowing that they were lesbians,” he added.

In 2007, Mateen got a job at G4S security company, as a guard at a local, gated housing community. According to a 2014 profile in Vanity Fair, G4S is a British company, third-largest private employer in the world, which, in addition to thousands of “lowly security agents,” also provides cover to high-level MI-6 geo-political subversions. In 2009, Mateen got married and bought a house. But, two years later, the marriage ended in divorce, with his wife complaining about beatings.

During this time Mateen became religious, if not “radicalized.” In 2011, and again in 2012, Mateen visited Saudi Arabia, for their annual Haj. When he came back, still an employee of G4S, Mateen quickly became the object of government surveillance, being picked up by the FBI in 2013, and again in 2014. In 2013, the FBI wanted to question him about “comments to co-workers suggesting he had terrorist ties, and again the next year, for possible connections to Moner Mohammad abu Salha, an American who became a suicide bomber in Syria,” FBI’s Ronald Hopper told the New York Times. Mateen attended the same mosque as suicide bomber Abu Salha, in his home town of Fort Pierce, Florida.

Mateen also studied at the Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary in Orlando, run by one Marcus Dwayne Robertson — himself an FBI informant. According to a profile in Fox News today, Robertson was a former Marine who became the leader of a criminal network of bank robbers in New York, called “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves.” Robertson was apparently arrested in 1991, but then became the “body guard to the Blind Sheik [Shaykh Omar Abdul Rahman] involved in the 1993 World Trade Center Attack,” only one of the numerous other points of FBI “control” in that operation. Robertson later served four years in prison, then again as informant from 2004 to 2007, “to document terrorist plans and networks in Africa, Egypt and the United States.” Now calling himself Abu Taubah, he re-surfaced in Florida and started his “Seminary,” where he preached against homosexuality.

A report in Sunday’s Florida Today quotes Daniel Gilroy, a recent co-worker of Mateen. “I quit because everything he said was toxic,” Gilroy said, “and the company [g4s] wouldn’t do anything. This guy was unhinged and unstable. He talked of killing people.”

It should be noted that Mateen purchased all of his guns legally, as needed for his job.