Orlando gunman Omar Mateen apparently made a series of Facebook posts and searches before and during his attack on a gay nightclub, raging against the “filthy ways of the west” and blaming the US for the deaths of “innocent women and children,” according to a Senate committee letter released Wednesday.
The killer, whose rampage left 49 people dead, also searched for “Pulse Orlando” and “Shooting” online on the morning of the carnage Sunday, and said on Facebook: “America and Russia stop bombing the Islamic state,” according to the letter.
“The real muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the west,” Mateen wrote, according to the letter from committee chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican.
As he did in his call to a 911 operator during the massacre, Mateen pledged his allegiance on Facebook to the leader of the Islamic State and, in his final post, warned: “in the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic state in the USA.”
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Additionally, new footage which emerged on Wednesday also shows Mateen cursing and flippantly discussing the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in a clip from a documentary about the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Mateen was filmed secretly by the makers of the documentary, “The Big Fix,” as he worked as a security guard at a beach at night in Pensacola, Florida where the clean-up was taking place.
In the video, he disparages workers who were cleaning up the spill, saying:
No one gives a shit here. Like, everybody’s just out to get paid. They’re, like, hoping for more oil to come out and more people to complain so they’ll have the jobs. (Be)cause once people get laid off here it’s going to suck for them. They want more disaster to happen. Because that’s where their money-making is.Omar Mateen
The film-makers, Josh and Rebecca Tickell, said in a statement that they had turned the footage over to authorities.
(With inputs from agencies.)
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