Marine veteran helped dozens escape Orlando shooting...
Marine Vet Hailed as Hero for Helping Dozens Escape Orlando Shooting
Jun 15, 2016 | A U.S. Marine Corps veteran is being recognized as a hero for helping dozens of people escape the mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub.
See also:Imran Yousuf, a 24-year-old Hindu and former Marine who served in Afghanistan, was working as a bouncer at the Pulse nightclub when he heard the familiar sounds of gunfire. "That was a shock. Three or four shots go off and you could just tell it was a high caliber," he told CBS News. "Everyone froze." As patrons raced to flee the gunfire, they packed into the back staff hallway where he was, Yousuf said. He instructed them to open a latch on a nearby door to exit the building, but they froze in a state of panic, he said. "I'm just screaming, 'Open the door! Open the door!' and no one's moving because they were scared," Yousuf told the news organization. "There was only one choice: Either we all stay there and we all die or I could either take the chance and get shot and save everyone else. And I jumped over, opened that latch and we got every one that we can out of there."
When correspondent Mark Strassmann asked him how many people exited the door, Yousuf estimated between 60 and 70. Strassmann told him he saved a lot of lives. "I wish I could save more, to be honest. There's a lot of people that are dead," he said, his voice breaking. "There's a lot of people that are dead." A total of 49 people were killed in the attack, including Antonio Davon Brown, a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve. Another 53 people were injured in the shooting, several of whom remain hospitalized with serious injuries. The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history began around 2 a.m. Sunday at the nightclub, which caters to the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender, or LBGT, community, and lasted until around 5 a.m. when a SWAT team raided the building.
A survivor of the attack was 24-year-old Imran Yousuf, a Marine veteran of Afghanistan and a bouncer at the club, who leaped over a bar during the shooting to unlatch a door and allow dozens to escape.
The shooting is also the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida militants crashed airliners into the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.; and a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people. The gunman was identified as Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S. citizen and Muslim who lived in Fort Pierce, Florida, and whose parents were of Afghan origin. While he was apparently acting alone, he had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. The FBI has acknowledged Mateen was under surveillance for a time. Yousuf is a native of Schenectady, New York, near the state capital of Albany. After graduating from Niskayuna High School, he served for almost six years in the Marine Corps, from 2010 to 2016, achieving the rank of sergeant, or E-5, according to his service records.
He served as an engineer equipment electrical systems technician and completed a seven-month tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2011. His last duty assignment was with the 3rd Marine Logistics Group. His awards include the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon (2), Korean Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, National Defense Service Medal, and NATO Medal, according to his service records. On his Facebook page, Yousuf said the television interview has brought "closure." "It created such closure for me that I believe I am finally able to move on from this and get focused back on my goals and my life," he wrote. "I thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for their kind words, prayers and support. It means more than you realize!"
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2...-shooting.html
FBI Eyes Wife of Orlando Shooter as an Accomplice
Jun 15, 2016 | The FBI is looking into whether jihadi killer Omar Mateen's wife helped him scout out Orlando's Pulse nightclub before the massacre and knew he planned to commit violence, according to published reports.
Related:Noor Zahi Salman told investigators she had driven Mateen, 29, to Pulse nightclub on prior occasions, and tried to convince him not to go through with the attack, according to NBC News, which cited law enforcement sources. Mateen was killed in a shootout with police early Sunday after killing 49 people and injuring 53, authorities say. A grand jury has now been impaneled to determine whether Salman will be criminally charged in connection with the attack, according to Fox News. As heartbroken victims recalled in grim detail the horror of the slaughter yesterday, investigators continued to gather information on the New York-born Muslim -- and took a close look at his wife, too.
An official who was briefed on the progress of the case, but insisted on anonymity, said authorities believe Salman knew about Mateen's plot ahead of time but are reluctant to charge her on that basis alone. The investigation also has now extended to Afghanistan, where Mateen's parents were born, and Saudi Arabia, which he visited on pilgrimages in 2011 and 2012, the Los Angeles Times reported. In Washington, President Obama said investigators had no information to suggest a foreign terrorist group directed the attack. Obama said it was increasingly clear Mateen "took in extremist information and propaganda over the internet" and appeared to be "an angry, disturbed, unstable young man who became radicalized."
Omar Mateen, right, with his wife, Noor Zahi Salman, and their son.
The president went on to blast presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric as dangerous and contrary to American values while challenging Congress to reinstate the assault weapons ban. Obama also mocked Republicans for urging him to describe the attack as "radical Islam," saying: "If someone seriously thinks we don't know who we're fighting, if there's anyone out there who thinks we're confused about who our enemies are -- that would come as a surprise to the thousands of terrorists we've taken off the battlefield." In the days since the horrific mass shooting, a number of possible explanations and motives for the bloodbath have emerged. Officials say Mateen professed an allegiance to the Islamic State terror group in a 911 call during the attack; his ex-wife said he was mentally ill; and Mateen's father suggested he was driven by a hatred of homosexuals.
But despite his apparent hatred for gays, several patrons told news networks yesterday they had seen Mateen at the bar prior to the attack -- and some even admitted chatting with him on a gay dating app. Jim Van Horn, 71, told The Associated Press that Mateen was a regular at the bar. "He was a homosexual and he was trying to pick up men," Van Horn said. "He would walk up to them and then he would maybe put his arm around 'em or something and maybe try to get them to dance."
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Did Islamic State Claim Credit for Latest Attacks Too Soon?
Jun 15, 2016 | It took just a few hours for the Islamic State group's opportunistic propaganda machine to capitalize on the latest bloodshed in Florida and in France, with messages claiming the two attackers as its own. It may take the group longer to sort through the implications of a killer whose backstory of conflicted sexuality and heavy drinking is at odds with a carefully crafted public image of its fighters.
But whether the links were direct or merely aspirational, they were enough to thrust IS to the center of the U.S. presidential race and the debate over the role of Islam in the world. They were enough to cause France to re-examine who should be expelled over links to extremism. The group's apocalyptic message is aimed as much at Muslims living in the West as it is at non-Muslims, hoping to persuade an undecided audience to adopt its extremist views -- and reject Western ideals of pluralism and tolerance, preferably with bombs and bullets. Facing defeat on the battlefield, it is taking victories where it can find them.
The attack on a gay nightclub in Florida by an American-born Muslim during Ramadan and the stabbing of two police officials in France two days later would initially appear to dovetail perfectly with that worldview. Omar Mateen's killing of 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando tapped into deep fears that extremists are lying in wait to prey upon the West at home -- fears that Islamic State fans at every available opportunity. "The uncomfortable reality is that attacks such as the one in Orlando become 'Islamic State attacks' simply because the attackers declare them as such. The validity of their assertions matters less than the consequences of their actions," according to an analysis Tuesday by the Soufan Group security consultancy. "Mateen may have sought to catapult his reputation from that of a homophobic mass-murderer to a 'soldier of the caliphate,' merely by parroting the group's name."
President Barack Obama said Mateen was inspired by the group's internet propaganda, and during the attack, Mateen called 911 to offer allegiance to Islamic State. "With the tyrants closing the doors of migration, you should open the doors of jihad, and let them regret it," Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani said in a message late last month directed to Muslims living in the West. But Mateen's messy life shows the hazards for an extremist group that hinges its credibility on its faith. Pulse customers have described him as a regular at the gay nightclub, someone who drank heavily and could be disruptive when intoxicated. Islamic State has reserved one of its most gruesome methods of killing for suspected gays -- throwing them to their death from rooftops. Alcohol is banned in the group's territory, and anyone caught with it gets whipped, lashed or fined.
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