Orlando gunman’s father hosted his own TV politics show

Shooter's father bought airtime on Afghan satellite to spout anti-Pakistan views

Omar Mateen. Credit CBS

WASHINGTON // The Afghan-born father of the gunman behind the biggest mass shooting in the US yet expressed strong anti-Pakistan views on a political show he hosted on an Afghan satellite channel in the US.

Seddique Mateen, father of Omar Mateen, would buy airtime on the California-based satellite channel Payam-e-Afghan to broadcast a show called Durand Jirga which discussed the disputed frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

According to Omar Khatab, owner of the satellite station, Mateen’s views were largely anti-Pakistan.

“Three or four times a year, he would show up in southern California, “ said Mr Khatab. “He’d talk for about two to three hours. He’d buy his own time and come here and broadcast and leave within a day.”

One of Seddique Mateen’s videos referred to the “killer ISI” – the acronym for Pakistan’s main intelligence service, run by the military – and said the agency was the “creator and father of the world’s terrorism.”

Pakistani intelligence has also been accused of backing violence against US targets in Afghanistan – an allegation Pakistan denies.

In January 2014, Mr Mateen interviewed Ashraf Ghani, later elected president of Afghanistan. The interview, which covered he country’s economic development and youth unemployment, took place in Kabul and Mr Mateen took back the footage to California for broadcast.

Mr Mateen insisted it was not religious fervour which drove his son to enter the Pulse nightclub in Orlando on Sunday armed with an assault rifle and a handgun and open fire, killing 50 people and wounding 53 others, some of them critically.

Rather, he had been angered by the sight of two men in Miami kissing in front of his wife and child.

“We are saying we are apologising for the whole incident,” Mr Mateen told NBC News. “We weren’t aware of any action he was taking. We are in shock like the whole country.”

Seddique Mateen lives in Florida but it was unclear when he went to the US from Afghanistan. His son, whose full name was Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, was born in New York in 1986 but was living in Port Lucie, Florida, a two-hour drive from Orlando, when he embarked on his killing spree.

Since September 2007, he had worked as an armed security officer for G4S, one of the world’s largest private security firms, with contracts to supply security in federal buildings.

Mateen, 29, had twice been interviewed by FBI in cases related to terrorism, once in 2013 when he made inflammatory remarks to colleagues about being involved in terrorism and again in 2014 over possible connections to an American suicide bomber.

The investigations proved “inconclusive”, according to FBI official Ronald Hopper. He was not under investigation or surveillance at the time of Sunday’s shooting and the FBI established that the weapons and ammunition Mateen used were legally purchased “within the last few days”.

He also underwent background checks with G4S in 2007 and 2013.

His ex-wife, Sitora Yusifiy, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, has claimed that he was mentally unstable and abusive to her during their brief marriage.

Ms Yusifiy said she had met Mateen online about eight years ago but left him after four months because of his violence and has had no contact with him since. She remembered him as religious but not a radical.

While US officials said they had no evidence of Mateen’s connection with any extremist group, Mateen made reference to extremism in a telephone call he made to the US emergency 911 number, during the shooting, in which he pledged allegiance to ISIL and mentioned the Boston Marathon bombings in which two bomb explosions killed three people and injured 264 during the road race in 2013.

* Reuters