We are now learning that just a few years ago the Orlando Muslim terrorist took a trip to Saudi Arabia, a year before he was noticed by the FBI:
NBC NEWS – Teams of agents have been working “around the clock” to process a “great amount” of electronic and physical evidence, he added, saying the investigation was “still in the early stages.”
Federal officials told NBC News that Mateen went to Saudi Arabia in 2011 and 2012 — but said it was not immediately clear what he was doing there.
A spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of the Interior, though, told NBC News that Mateen visited to perform a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Here’s how he came to the attention of the FBI:
Mateen first came to the FBI’s attention in 2013 after co-workers reported he’d made “inflammatory” comments to them about radical Islamic propaganda.
A year later the FBI looked into him again because of his ties to an American who traveled to the Middle East to become a suicide bomber. Agents determined contact there was minimal and Mateen was not under surveillance on Sunday, when he carried out the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
We are now learning from CNN that this American suicide bomber mentioned above also visited the same mosque as the Orlando shooter when when he was still in the states, which sounds like what the FBI investigated:
So is anyone looking into this mosque? Or are we just gonna chalk this up to coincidence?