Thread: Jury finds Noor Salman not guilty of all charges connected to Pulse nightclub .....

Jury finds Noor Salman not guilty of all charges connected to Pulse nightclub shooting

John Bacon and Christal Hayes, USA TODAY
Published 9:53 a.m. ET March 30, 2018
Updated 10:33 a.m. ET March 30, 2018

10:27 a.m.: The widow of the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay Orlando nightclub has been acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI and helping her husband in the 2016 attack.

Noor Salman was found not guilty of charges of obstruction and providing material support to a terrorist organization.

9:45 a.m.: The jury has reached a verdict in the trial of Noor Salman, widow of Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen. Mateen killed 49 people in 2016.

Officials from U.S. District Court in Orlando said Friday the jury had reached its decision, and it will be announced in about 30 minutes.

Noor Salman is charged with obstruction and providing material support to a terrorist organization. She faces life in prison if convicted.

EARLIER STORY

ORLANDO — The fate of the Pulse nightclub gunman's widow will remain a mystery for another day as a jury plans to continue deliberations Friday on whether she helped her husband plan the the bloody attack in Orlando that killed 49 people.

The deliberations started Wednesday afternoon and will stretch into a third day. They are schedule to be back Friday morning to continue their examination of the case. Noor Salman, 31, is charged with providing material support to the Islamic State, a foreign terror organization, and with obstructing justice. She could face life in prison if convicted.

During the day Thursday, jurors asked Judge Paul Byron for some definitions and descriptions related to the charges, some of which he provided.

On Wednesday, jurors asked for and were given a copy of Salman's statement to the FBI following husband Omar Mateen's 2016 attack on the nightclub that ended in Mateen's fatal shooting by police.

The statement has been a crucial piece of evidence in the case and a major point of contention with questions whether the 12-page statement Salman signed was fact or fiction.

In the early morning hours after the attack, she was questioned by federal authorities and her story changed multiple times, prosecutors said. She finally signed a 12-page statement that outlined her knowledge of Mateen's planning and his idolization of the Islamic State.

"I knew when he left the house he was going to Orlando to attack the Pulse nightclub," the statement said. It added that Mateen has been discussing jihad with her for two years.

Salman also said in the statement that she had accompanied Mateen while casing Pulse and other potential targets. But during the course of the trial, it was revealed that GPS and cellphone data showed that neither Mateen nor Salman had been near the nightclub before the attack.

In one of multiple failed attempts at a mistrial, Salman's attorneys argued the government never told them that part of the statement had been proved false. The defense lawyers argued that the disproved statement was a key piece of evidence that kept her behind bars since her arrest in January 2017.

While that piece of the statement has been disproved, prosecutors stressed they used electronic evidence to prove other points were correct, including Mateen's obsession with ISIS.

Contributing: The Associated Press

https://www.floridatoday.com/story/n...een/472612002/

Pulse Nightclub Shooter’s Widow Found Not Guilty

Posted 10:36 am, March 30, 2018, by CNN Wire, Updated at 10:35AM, March 30, 2018

A verdict has been reached in the trial of Noor Salman, the widow of the Pulse nightclub gunman, who is accused of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and obstruction of justice related to the 2016 Orlando massacre.

Jurors began deliberating the federal case Wednesday afternoon.

Salman, 31, was arrested in January 2017, months after her husband, Omar Mateen, killed 49 people and injured more than 50 others when he opened fire the prior June at Pulse nightclub. Mateen was killed by police who responded to the attack.

Prosecutors said Salman aided Mateen ahead of his killing spree, then lied to the FBI in an attempt to thwart the investigation.

“This case is about what she knew and what she did,” Assistant US Attorney Sara Sweeney said. “The defendant didn’t pull the trigger that night, but she did serve as a green light for her husband.”

Salman’s attorneys argued that their client was not an accomplice but a simple-minded victim of her husband’s infidelity and lies.

“She doesn’t go to the mosque, she searches for Hello Kitty on her website,” defense attorney Charles Swift said in his closing argument. “We’re supposed to believe she had long conversations with Omar Mateen about jihads?”

Salman did not testify during the trial. If she is convicted on the terror charge, she could face life in prison.
‘I wish I had been more truthful’

During 10 days of testimony, jurors watched surveillance video showing Mateen buying weapons prior to the shooting and also opening fire inside the nightclub.

Security cameras also recorded Mateen going with Salman on a shopping spree for clothing, toys and jewelry at several stores in central Florida at least a week before the shooting.

After Salman’s arrest, she said in a statement to the FBI that she knew in advance that her husband was going to do something violent.

“I wish I had done the right thing, but my fear held me back. I wish I had been more truthful,” she wrote in the statement, which was shown in court.

FBI special agent Ricardo Enriquez testified that Salman said in several statements to the FBI that Mateen watched jihadi beheading videos, purchased a rifle and ammunition and went to a gun range to practice.
‘She’s not calculating’

Defense attorneys cast Salman as a mother and a victim of Mateen’s abuse and infidelity, as well as of the FBI’s coercive investigators.

“Omar Mateen is a monster. Noor Salman is a mother, not a monster. Her only sin is she married a monster,” defense attorney Linda Moreno told jurors.

Since the defense launched its case Monday, Mateen’s family and friends described her as a peaceful person and a good mother. They said Salman is not capable of being “calculating,” “deceptive” or “able to connect the dots.”

“Nothing harmful would come out of her,” a friend of Salman’s who was identified only as Ms. Ahmed told jurors, according to CNN affiliate WKGM.

Bruce Frumkin, a forensic clinical psychologist, testified Tuesday, saying lack of sleep, mental issues, low IQ scores and lengthy interrogations contribute to false confessions.

Salman was interviewed by authorities for 11 hours and her IQ score is 84, which makes her “below average in intelligence,” Frumkin said.
Gunman’s father was FBI informant

Defense attorneys filed a motion for dismissal last weekend after prosecutors informed them that the shooter’s father was an FBI informant who is under criminal investigation.

The revelation threatened to upend the case against Salman, but the judge denied the motion, saying it was not relevant to the case against her.

Seddique Mateen was a confidential FBI source at various points in time between January 2005 and June 2016, a motion filed by the defense states, citing an email from Sweeney.

The email also states that Seddique Mateen is being investigated for money transfers to Turkey and Afghanistan after documents were found in his home on June 12, 2016, the day of the Pulse attack. The dates of the money transfers were between March 16, 2016, and June 5, 2016, according to the email.

Defense attorneys argued that if they had known about Seddique Mateen’s FBI status, they may have argued other theories during the trial, including that the Mateens, rather than Salman, conspired to support ISIS, according to the motion.

Seddique Mateen had been on the prosecution’s witness list but was not called to testify in the trial.

http://wnep.com/2018/03/30/pulse-nig...nd-not-guilty/

From here on, I think states need to try all these domestic mass shooting and terrorism cases. I don't know if the verdict would have been any different, but state investigators would have discovered the very suspicious and peculiar role of the FBI in this shooting and pursued that. Instead while the FBI is holding back their own information about the father of the shooter being an FBI informant for more than a decade, they're charging a low IQ woman with "lying to the FBI". I guess now we know why and how the "father" got positioned right behind Trump somehow at that Florida rally. What a disgusting set-up by the FBI. Puke City.

Congress, you need to repeal the "lying to the FBI" statute. I don't know where any of you got the idea that lying to any police organization is a "crime", but it isn't and shouldn't be on your books as one. Americans have every right to lie to authorities who want to harm them. It's free speech self-defense, it's a First Amendment Right. No other police organization has the authority to prosecute witnesses for lying in interviews or during interrogations. And Americans need to wise up and refuse to talk to the FBI about anything until this law is repealed. Just take the Fifth Amendment immediately and stick to it all the way through whatever is going on until this horrible law is repealed.

Furthermore, Congress needs to modify the federal subpoena law and restrict the DOJ from any subpoena action and requests for any information from anyone who is a target of an investigation until there is a formal defined crime to investigate.

I think this woman was involved and should have been tried and convicted of something in that regard, but with the shooter's father on the FBI informant list, there is no way even I would have voted guilty with that revelation on the table. Too much doubt. No trust in the "investigators".

And Trump's lawyers need to go down to Florida and interview the "father", find out who sent him to that rally and arranged for his special seat right behind Trump at that Florida rally, because I don't think he made his way there and got in that seat by himself.