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Violent Jihad

How Could the DOJ Lose Noor Salman?

Attorney General Loretta Lynch admits that Omar Mateen's wife was allowed to travel without DOJ leadership being kept apprised of when and where.

BY CounterJihad · @CounterjihadUS | June 22, 2016

The Attorney General of the United States, Loretta Lynch, admitted yesterday that she didn’t know whether Omar Mateen’s wife had left the state of Florida or not.  “I believe she was going to travel,” Lynch said, before confirming that she didn’t know wife Noor Salman’s whereabouts.  This comes four days after Salman apparently vanished, with her father in law telling reporters simply that “she is no longer here.” Finding out where she is has not apparently been a priority for Department of Justice (DOJ) leaders.

There are two broad ways of reading this story, both of which make the DOJ look very bad.  On one reading, Noor Salman is a battered wife who has been intimidated and abused by a murderous husband.  Her failure to come forward and report her husband before the Pulse nightclub attack is explained in terms of the effects of abuse and domination on the psyche.  Her testimony could have saved everyone in that nightclub — even a misdemeanor conviction for domestic abuse strips one of the right to keep and bear arms under the Lautenberg Amendment to the Gun Control Act of 1968.  However, on this reading we have to recognize that it’s unreasonable to expect a battered spouse to think and act with dispassionate reason.

On this reading, the reason to keep a very close eye on Mrs. Omar Mateen is that she is a witness whose life is in grave danger from the rest of Mr. Omar Mateen’s ‘wolf den’.  As Reuters points out, such ‘dens’ are the norm in what we often take to be ‘lone wolf’ attacks.  In this case, Omar Mateen appears to have been connected to a network of dangerous radicals.  Just as he had no qualms about using and abusing her, his comrades in arms may have no qualms about ‘disappearing’ her in a permanent fashion.  It would prevent her telling the FBI the rest of whatever she knows.  She should be watched both because she is an important witness, and because her life is in imminent danger.

The other way of reading the story is to take a more skeptical eye of Noor Salman’s claims of abuse.  She admitted helping her husband scout both the Pulse nightclub and Disney World before the attacks.  She witnessed his transfer of his interest in their home to a brother-in-law.  In the days before the attack her husband gave her access to his bank accounts when he hadn’t before, an odd choice for an abusive husband who wants to dominate his wife.  He bought them both plane tickets to the west coast right before the attacks, suggesting he expected to survive and escape with her.

On this alternative reading, she should be watched constantly because she’s a suspect in one of the worst terror attacks ever to occur on American soil.

Salman has not been arrested, but if she had knowledge of the plot and failed to alert law enforcement, she could face criminal charges, including the intentional concealing of knowledge of a felony, aiding and abetting a crime, or even conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism, depending on her level of culpability. Federal authorities reportedly convened a grand jury in Florida on Wednesday to help investigate the shooting, and that would be a vehicle for filing federal charges against Salman.

Federal officials are apparently aware of a possible explanation for her disappearance:  she may have simply gone to see her mother, who is having a difficult recovery from surgery.   Nevertheless, having a plausible explanation for travel can also simply be an excuse to disappear more fully.

Salman is either a battered spouse whose abuse was sufficiently severe to excuse her participation in planning homicides, or she is an accomplice to a very serious set of murders.  In the one case it would be reckless for DOJ even to send the signal that they were not watching her, lest they peril her life at the hands of radicals.  If in fact she is guilty, they are gambling with the hope of justice for those murdered in Orlando.

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