Orlando gunman called for the U.S. to 'stop bombing Syria and Iraq'

A police officer outside the Pulse nightclub.

By Marisa Gerber and Molly Hennessy-Fiske

June 20, 2016 4:54 PM PT

Reporting from Orlando, Fla. — The gunman who launched last week’s deadly shooting rampage at an Orlando gay nightclub identified himself to police as an Islamic solider and demanded that the U.S. stop bombing Syria and Iraq, the FBI said Monday.

“In the name of God the merciful … praise be to God,” Omar Mateen, a security guard from southeast Florida, told a police dispatcher in a 2:35 a.m. phone call June 12 from Pulse nightclub. “I’m in Orlando, and I did the shootings.”

The call, detailed in transcripts released Monday by the FBI, came about half an hour after Mateen, 29, entered the popular gay nightspot and began a rapid-fire barrage that left 49 people dead.

During that first, 50-second conversation, Mateen pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr Baghdadi, head of the militant group Islamic State: “May God protect him,” he said in Arabic, according to the new FBI report.

The full transcript was released only after several Republican political leaders criticized a version released earlier Monday in which the names of Baghdadi and Islamic State, as well as the full name of the gunman, were redacted.

“Out of respect for the victims of this horrific tragedy, law enforcement will not be releasing audio of the shooter’s 911 calls at this time…. Furthermore, the name of the shooter and that of the person/group to whom he pledged allegiance are omitted,” the FBI said in its initial release.

FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ronald Hopper said this was an attempt to avoid giving credence to “cowards” or fueling copycats.

“We’re not going to propagate violent extremism,” he said.

But Florida Gov. Rick Scott said not including references by name to the group, which is also referred to by the acronym ISIS, deprived victims’ families of a full picture of the killer’s motive. He accused the Obama administration of shying away from focusing on Islamic State.

“We’ve got to call this for what it is,” he told Fox News. “This is evil, it’s ISIS, it’s radical Islam.”

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan had also been critical of the initial editing, calling it “preposterous” censorship and insisting that an unredacted transcript was necessary “so the public is clear-eyed about who did this, and why.”

Before long, federal officials backtracked.

In a joint statement with the Justice Department, the FBI several hours later released a new version of Mateen’s 911 call with no omissions. The agency said it reconsidered after realizing the unreleased portions had “caused an unnecessary distraction from the hard work that the FBI and our law enforcement partners have been doing to investigate this heinous crime.”

The statement also noted that much of the redacted material had already been reported.

Mateen never gave his name during his 911 call, but he did claim responsibility for the attack.

“What’s your name?” the dispatcher asked at that point.

“My name is I pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, may God protect him, on behalf of the Islamic State,” Mateen replied.

The dispatcher tried to find out where he was before Mateen abruptly hung up. Mateen went on to have three conversations with Orlando police negotiators. The first conversation lasted nine minutes, the second sixteen minutes and the last was three minutes. At one point, a crisis negotiator asked the shooter what he had done.

“You already know what I did,” Mateen responded, adding that there was a bomb-filled vehicle outside the club.

“You people are gonna get it, and I’m gonna ignite it if they try to do anything stupid,” he said.

FBI officials said that during the calls Mateen told negotiators he had a vest, which he compared to explosives used in a recent terrorist attack in France. He also told police to tell the U.S. to stop bombing Syria and Iraq, saying that this was why he was “out here right now.”

“In the next few days,” Mateen told them, “you’re going to see more of this type of action going on.”

Orlando Police Chief John Mina declined to go into detail about the negotiations during a news conference Monday, but said one purpose of the conversations was to keep Mateen talking to distract him from shooting more victims.

After an initial round of shots was fired at about 2 a.m., Mina said, no other shots were fired inside the nightclub until three hours later, when police burst into the building using a tactical vehicle. At 5:15 a.m., the FBI said, members of the SWAT team shot and killed Mateen.

Asked whether any civilians had been killed during the shootout between police and Mateen, Mina said he couldn’t comment because it was part of an ongoing investigation. He then added, “Those killings are on the suspect and on the suspect alone.”

Some of the questions around the timeline have centered on the three hours that elapsed between the initial shootings and when police stormed the bathroom where Mateen was holed up with hostages.

Mina emphasized that police first entered the nightclub six minutes after authorities first got word of the shooting. And the new details released Monday make it clear that emergency officials were rescuing victims inside the club during the hours between the initial siege and the end of the drama.

In one case, at 4:21 a.m., Orlando police pulled an air-conditioning unit out of a dressing room window in order for victims to evacuate, the report said.

“I’m very confident they saved many, many lives,” Mina said.

Hopper said investigators had conducted more than 500 interviews, collected more than 600 pieces of evidence from the crime scene and received thousands of tips. Investigators said they were combing through social media accounts and contacting people who knew Mateen — even people who talked to him only once — in search of clues to a motive.

Hopper hedged when asked whether Mateen was gay, saying “those allegations are still being vetted out.”

By Monday, someone had claimed the gunman’s body, which had been housed separately from the bodies of the 49 victims, according to the Orange County, Fla., medical examiner’s office. There was no word on who claimed the body or whether any funeral was planned.

Bedar Bakht, who knew Mateen and his family from the mosque they attended in Fort Pierce, Fla., said the imam there has said he will not perform traditional funeral prayers for Mateen at the mosque before any burial. Bakht isn’t even sure whether he would attend the funeral, if there was one.

“The thing he has done…. I don’t know if I want to go to his funeral,” he said. Given the attack, Bakht said, Mateen “doesn’t deserve the attention that any funeral gets.”

Besides, he said, it’s believed that those with more than 100 people at their funeral are rewarded in the hereafter. “Why would I attend and give him the reward?” Bakht said. “It’s not right.”

Times staff writer Del Quentin Wilber in Washington contributed to this report.

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UPDATES:

4:54 p.m.: The story was updated with comments on possible funeral plans.

1:12 p.m.: The story was updated with additional details from the transcripts and an FBI news conference.

The story was originally published at 9:35 a.m.