“We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident,” said Mir Seddique, father of the perpetrator of Sunday’s mass murder at a gay nightclub in Orlando. “We weren’t aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.”
Seddique, a Muslim immigrant from Afghanistan, denied that his son’s attack was motivated by or connected to Islamic terrorism.
“This had nothing to do with religion,” said Seddique.
Omar Mateen, who changed his name in 2006, might have been enraged by a recent incident involving two homosexual men, said his father.
“We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry,” said Seddique. “They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.’ And then we were in the men’s bathroom and men were kissing each other.”
Mateen had been investigated by the FBI, according to a “senior law enforcement” source speaking with The Daily Beast.
“He’s a known quantity,” said the left-wing news outlet’s source. “He’s been on the radar before.”
Mateen’s ex-wife said she was beaten by her former husband. The two were living together and married for a few months in 2009, with a formal divorce in 2011.
“He was not a stable person,” said the ex-wife, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety in the wake of the mass shooting. “He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”
“He seemed like a normal human being,” she added, describing Matan as not very religious and often exercising at the gym. In the few months they were together, she said, Mateen gave no signs of being an Islamist or Jihadist.
Mateen’s ex-wife’s parents removed her from her shared home with Mateen, after learning that he had assaulted her.
“They literally saved my life,” said Mateen’s ex-wife of her parents.
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