Orlando shootings: Club attacker had 'grudge in his heart', father says
- Published
Seddique Mateen said he did not understand why his son had carried out the shooting
The father of a gunman who killed dozens of people in an Orlando gay club says he did not know that his son had a "grudge in his heart".
Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in the deadliest mass shooting in recent US history, before being shot dead by police.
Seddique Mateen said he did not understand why his son had carried out the shooting at the Pulse nightclub.
The so-called Islamic State group (IS) called Omar Mateen one of its soldiers.
In a statement posted online and addressed to people in his native Afghanistan, Seddique Mateen said his son had been "a very good boy", who had a wife and a child.
"I don't know what caused it," he said. "I never figured out that he had a grudge in his heart... I am grief-stricken."
He added he did not know why his son had committed such an act during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, adding that the fate of gay people was "not in the hands of humans" as it was, he said, only God who could judge.
IS had called for attacks on the West during Ramadan.
On Sunday, Seddique Mateen said: "We are apologising for the whole incident. We are in shock, like the whole country."
He said his son had been angered after seeing two men kissing in Miami.
What happened on the night?
The attack began at about 02:00 local time (06:00 GMT) on Sunday. There was an exchange of fire with a police officer working at the club, after which the suspect took hostages.
At 05:00 a police assault team went into the club after police received text messages and phone calls from some of the hostages. Mateen was killed in an exchange of fire.
States of emergency have been declared in the city of Orlando and surrounding Orange County.
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Who were the victims?
So far, 24 victims have been named: 20 men and four women. They include:
- Edward Sotomayor, 34, who worked for a company that organised gay cruises
- Stanley Almodovar, 23, a pharmacy technician who was remembered as "kind and sassy"
- Kimberly Morris, 37, who had only recently moved to Orlando and worked at Pulse as a bouncer
- Luis Vielma, 22, who worked at the Harry Potter section at Universal Studios - author J K Rowling paid tribute to him online
- Eddie Justice, 30, who sent his mother a series of text messages while inside the club - read more on him here
Who was the killer?
Mateen, a US citizen of Afghan descent who was born in New York and lived in Florida, was not on a terrorism watch list.
However, the FBI interviewed him twice in 2013-14 after he made "inflammatory remarks" to a colleague, before closing its investigation.
Mateen had legally purchased several guns in the days before the attack.
A statement on the IS-affiliated Amaq news agency said an IS "fighter" was responsible and on Monday, the group's al-Bayan radio called Mateen "one of the Caliphate's soldiers in the US".
An FBI spokesman said Mateen had called the emergency services before the attack and sworn allegiance to IS.
On Sunday, Mateen's father said religion had had nothing to do with the attack.
A security company that Mateen used to work for said he had been vetted twice.
The checks in 2007 and 2013 did not reveal anything of concern, G4S said, and Mateen had carried a gun as part of his job.
Analysis: Gordon Corera, BBC Security Correspondent
The FBI's admission that it investigated Mateen on a number of occasions will raise questions not just for law enforcement but for the wider US security community.
It has frequently been the case in a number of countries that individuals are assessed as not dangerous at one point and then turn out to be a threat later. In the UK, this led the Security Service to place more emphasis on going back and checking up on previous cases to ensure that the threat assessment made in the past had not changed.
Keeping detailed files and watch on people can be resource-intensive, however, and has raised concerns over civil liberties in the past.
As the concern over home-grown terrorism in the US grows, there may be pressure to do more and there may also be further questions as to whether a previous investigation for possible terrorism should place people not just on No-Fly lists, but also restrict their ability to purchase weapons.
Ex-wife: Mateen was 'disturbed'
Sitora Yusufiy, supported by her fiance, talks about her ex-husband Omar Mateen
Sitora Yusufiy lived with Mateen for four months in 2009. She said her family had "rescued" her from the relationship when they became aware he was being physically abusive.
He beat her up regularly during their short-lived marriage for trivial things like not doing laundry, she said.
"When he would get in his tempers, he would express hate toward everything. He was mentally unstable and mentally ill: that's the only explanation that I could give."
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The death toll means that the Orlando attack surpasses the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech, which left 32 people dead.
According to the crowd-sourced Mass Shooting Tracker, the US suffered 372 mass shootings last year, defined as a single incident that kills or injures four or more people. Some 475 people were killed and 1,870 wounded.
The latest incident came as Orlando was still reeling from the fatal shooting on Friday night of 22-year-old singer Christina Grimmie following a concert in the city.