Noor Salman. Photo courtesy of Famous News.
Summary: Noor Salman was found not guilty of helping her husband, the Orlando shooter.
On Friday, a Florida jury found the wife of the Orlando nightclub shooter not guilty. According to Buzzfeed News, Noor Salman was acquitted of assisting in one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern US history.
Salman’s husband, Omar Mateen, entered the gay nightclub, Pulse, on June 12, 2016 with a handgun and a AR-15-style rifle. He terrorized the partygoers inside, pledging his allegiance to ISIS, and shooting and killing dozens of people. His final kill count was 49, and he left 58 injured.
The SWAT team stormed the club after a few minutes of Mateen’s terror, and they gunned him down at the scene.
Salman was arrested seven months later for aiding and abetting Mateen and for obstruction of justice. If she had been convicted, she could have received life in prison.
Prosecutors said that Salman, 31, helped her husband, even if she didn’t pull the actual trigger that night.
Salman’s defense team said that her only crime was marrying “a monster,” and they described her home life as one filled with abuse and adultery. Her supporters said that the prosecution’s attack on the widow was “rooted in gendered Islamophobia and patriarchy” and “guilt by association.”
Salman’s family said that Mateen’s widow was his “first victim” because of all of the domestic abuse.
“On this Good Friday, the family wants to say we’re very sorry for the family members and friends of the 49 victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting and also the survivors of that horrible attack,” a representative from Salman’s family said. “Really that is the top most important thing the family wants you all to know, regardless of their happiness today at the verdict.”
The jury deliberated starting on Wednesday after three weeks of testimony.
Buzzfeed News stated that Friday’s ruling was a blow to the Department of Justice, which has had a high conviction rate for terrorism-related cases.
“Salman’s verdict is a rare loss for the Department of Justice, which prides itself on having obtained convictions against hundreds of defendants in terrorism or terrorism-related federal cases since 9/11. The DOJ’s National Security Division reported a total of 627 public terrorism or terrorism-related convictions from Sept. 11, 2001 to Dec. 31, 2015,” Buzzfeed News said.
“Of the 162 federal prosecutions of ISIS-related cases in the US between March 2014 – when the the first ISIS-related indictment was obtained – and March 15, 2018, 106 have resulted in convictions, according to the Center on National Security at Fordham University’s School of Law. Of these, 15 were found guilty by trial, while 91 pleaded guilty. As of July 2017, no one had been acquitted in an ISIS-related federal case, according to a report by the Center on National Security,” Buzzfeed News continued.
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