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Wife of Orlando Gunman Charged Under Antiterrorism Laws Wife of Orlando Gunman Is Charged Under Antiterrorism Laws
(about 4 hours later)
OAKLAND, Calif. — The widow of the man who opened fire at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub last year appeared in a court here on Tuesday after federal officials unsealed an indictment that charged her under the nation’s antiterrorism laws. OAKLAND, Calif. — She fired none of the shots, she was nowhere near the bloody scene, and none of the evidence made public so far hints that she shared her husband’s violent jihadist ideology. Yet Noor Zahi Salman, the widow of the gunman who massacred revelers at an Orlando nightclub, stood before a federal judge on Tuesday as the only person charged in the attack.
Noor Zahi Salman, the wife of Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people during his siege at the Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016, shook visibly during an initial appearance before a federal magistrate judge but said little. In the early hours of June 12, Ms. Salman’s husband, Omar Mateen, killed 49 people at Pulse, a gay nightclub, and wounded 53 others in one of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil. Before being fatally shot by the police, Mr. Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, declared his allegiance to the Islamic State.
Dressed in a mustard yellow jail uniform, Ms. Salman’s voice was scarcely audible when she told Judge Donna M. Ryu that she understood the charges against her. Only when she was led from the courtroom did she raise her head and let her eyes search the gallery of the packed courtroom. Though suspicion and scrutiny naturally fall on people close to someone who commits terrorism or mass murder, it is rare for a wife or a girlfriend to end up facing charges. But in a brief hearing in federal court in Oakland, a federal prosecutor, Roger Handberg, explained why the authorities considered Ms. Salman an exception.
“She knew he was going to conduct the attack,” a federal prosecutor, Roger Handberg, told the judge, without offering additional details or comment. “She knew he was going to conduct the attack,” Mr. Handberg said.
Another hearing is scheduled in Federal District Court on Wednesday, when Judge Ryu will consider whether Ms. Salman should be held before she is returned to the Middle District of Florida, which includes Orlando. An indictment unsealed on Tuesday accused Ms. Salman, 30, of “aiding and abetting the attempted provision and provision of material support to a foreign terrorist organization,” a charge that can carry a sentence of life in prison. She was also charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly misleading police officers and federal agents, who interviewed her for 12 hours on the day of the shooting.
Her arrest on Monday, more than seven months after her husband’s rampage at the gay nightclub, came after a federal grand jury returned an indictment last week. The two-count indictment gave few details about the charges, but it said that by the end of April 2016, Ms. Salman had begun to “knowingly aid and abet Omar Mateen’s attempted provision and provision of ‘material support or resources’” from the Islamic State. Ms. Salman went with her husband to buy ammunition, drove him to Orlando when he apparently scouted his target, and knew that he watched jihadist propaganda videos. Those could be innocent acts or indications of criminal culpability, depending on her own intent and what she knew of his.
Ms. Salman, whom law enforcement officials interviewed for more than 12 hours on the day of the attack, was also accused of knowingly misleading F.B.I. agents and police officers in Fort Pierce, Fla., where the couple lived. Her fate could turn on evidence about her frame of mind, including how much she was controlled by her husband, who she has said abused her.
The indictment was kept under seal after the Justice Department, which wants Ms. Salman to forfeit more than $30,000, said that its release before her apprehension “could hinder or impede arrest efforts.” “We’ve seen the government trying to widen the definition of ‘material support,’ and the increased visibility of women being involved in jihadist movements” makes it easier to imagine charging them with terrorism, said Nimmi Gowrinathan, a visiting professor at the City College of New York who studies women in violent situations around the world.
Ms. Salman, 30, was arrested on Monday morning at her home in Rodeo, Calif., just north of here, and held overnight in a county jail. She could be sentenced to life in prison if she is convicted of the aiding and abetting charge. In an interview last fall with The New York Times, her only public statement since the attack, Ms. Salman said she had not known what her husband planned to do, a claim that her uncle, Al Salman, made repeatedly outside the courthouse on Tuesday.
In an interview last year with The New York Times, her only public comments since the attack at Pulse, Ms. Salman denied any role in the assault, during which Mr. Mateen, 29, declared his allegiance to the Islamic State. Prosecutors, who plan to pursue the case in a federal court in Florida, gave little new information, leaving unclear what evidence they had or why seven months had passed before charges were filed. Ms. Salman, who was arrested on Monday and has a young son fathered by Mr. Mateen, has been living with relatives in Rodeo, Calif., northeast of San Francisco.
“I was unaware of everything,” said Ms. Salman, who accused her husband of domestic violence and said that he had offered her gift after gift of jewelry before the attack. “I don’t condone what he has done. I am very sorry for what has happened. He has hurt a lot of people.” Visibly shaking in a mustard-yellow and gray jail uniform, Ms. Salman stood in court Tuesday and, in a barely audible voice, told Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu, who had to ask her to speak up, that she understood the charges against her. Only when she was led from the courtroom did she raise her head and let her eyes search the packed gallery. On Wednesday, the judge will consider whether to grant bail.
Federal investigators believe that Mr. Mateen, who was fatally shot by the police, drew inspiration, but not specific support, from the Islamic State. Their inquiry suggested that Mr. Mateen made extensive plans for the attack, and Ms. Salman acknowledged that she had joined her husband for a visit to Orlando when he scouted Pulse for his eventual assault. Ms. Salman has insisted that she did not know that Mr. Mateen was planning an attack and that she was not alarmed when her husband, a private security guard, bought ammunition. The married couple who fatally shot 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., in 2015 provide the clearest case of a wife as accomplice, but examples remain rare.
Ms. Salman said, though, that she was aware that Mr. Mateen was viewing jihadist videos. She said that she disapproved and that she forced Mr. Mateen to turn off the recordings because she did not want the couple’s young son to see them. A study of more than 100 terrorists in Western countries who acted alone or in pairs found that most of them were single. Sixty-four percent confided in someone about their plans, the authors found, but follow-up research showed that only 4 percent told a spouse, a girlfriend or a boyfriend.
Officials in Florida welcomed the indictment against Ms. Salman, who is the first person to be charged in connection with the Pulse attack. The closest parallel to Ms. Salman may be Katherine Russell, the widow of one of the Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and the mother of his child. The bombs detonated at the race in 2013 were made in the home she and her husband shared, and testimony at the trial of the surviving bomber — Ms. Russell’s brother-in-law, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — indicated that her computer had been used for a search on the rewards that come to the widow of a martyr for Islam.
“Nothing can erase the pain we all feel about the senseless and brutal murders of 49 of our neighbors, friends, family members and loved ones,” Chief John W. Mina of the Orlando police said. “But today, there is some relief in knowing that someone will be held accountable for that horrific crime.” Ms. Russell talked to investigators but refused to testify before a grand jury without immunity from prosecution. Federal agents investigating the case were eager to bring charges against her, but prosecutors decided not to.
But a lawyer for Ms. Salman, Linda Moreno, cited the allegations of spousal abuse and said that it was “misguided and wrong to prosecute her.” Ms. Salman and Mr. Mateen’s former wife, Sitora Yusufiy, have both said that he beat them severely and tried to control every aspect of their lives. Citing that abuse, a lawyer for Ms. Salman, Linda Moreno, said recently that it was “misguided and wrong to prosecute her.”
Outside the courthouse, a man who said he was Ms. Salman’s uncle, Al Salman, said he believed that his niece had played no role in the attack. Experts say that domestic violence is a common trait among mass killers and terrorists, and that close relatives are often among their victims. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was also accused of domestic violence by a previous girlfriend.
“She had no idea,” he said. “Misogyny and extremism work together very often, so abuse is entrenched in these cases,” Dr. Gowrinathan, the City College professor, said. But, she added, sympathy for women as victims of abuse tends to evaporate in terrorism cases.
At the time of the Pulse shooting, Ms. Salman was at home in Fort Pierce, Fla., a two-hour drive from Orlando, but the indictment charged that she had been abetting her husband’s plans since at least late April. Prosecutors say she knowingly misled the F.B.I. agents and Fort Pierce police officers who interviewed her.
The indictment also says the government wants her to forfeit more than $30,000, which may be connected to the jewelry she has said her husband lavished on her in the final days of his life.
In interviews last year, friends and acquaintances described Ms. Salman as a relatively naïve young woman, a doting mother who could have unwittingly witnessed the buildup to her husband’s attack. The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, she struggled in high school, they said, but earned an associate degree at a community college before meeting Mr. Mateen, a son of Afghan immigrants, on an Arab dating website.
“I was unaware of everything,” Ms. Salman said in the Times interview last year. “I don’t condone what he has done. I am very sorry for what has happened. He has hurt a lot of people.”
She said that she had known her husband was viewing jihadist videos, but that she had disapproved and forced him to turn them off so that their son would not see them. She said that the drive to Orlando had seemed innocent, and that the ammunition purchase was unremarkable for a security guard who practiced at a shooting range.
The F.B.I. questioned Mr. Mateen after he told co-workers in 2013 that he had ties to terrorist groups like Hezbollah, and again in 2014, when his name came up in another terrorism case. But agents never found evidence that he was plotting an attack. In the Times interview, Ms. Salman said she had thought that if her husband had been a danger, the F.B.I. would have arrested him.