Orlando: Omar Mateen, the alleged ISIS loyalist who massacred 49 people and left another 53 severely injured at a club in Orlando, might have been a gay but chose to hide his true identity out of anger and shame, sources close to the alleged shooter have revealed.
Mateen’s ex-wife Sitora Yusufiy has now stepped forward to say that she thinks Mateen may have been gay.
Yusufiy, during an interview at her home in Colorado, said Mateen had seemed “perfect — American enough for her free spirit and Muslim enough to please her traditional family.
“He might have been a gay but chose to hide his true identity out of anger and shame,” Sitora Yusufiy said, adding that she met Mateen online in 2008 and the two got married in 2009.
“This man was a simple, Americanized guy that was also from my culture. And, you know, had the same religion. So I was like, OK , this could potentially satisfy my parents,” she added.
Yusufiy moved to Florida, and they married in a quiet courthouse ceremony in 2009. But the short-lived marriage was marred by violence and isolation, she said.
She had no friends or family in Florida, and Mateen preferred that she stay in the house. She said he sometimes returned from work angry and agitated, including one night when she fell asleep on the floor waiting for him to return home.
“All I remember is being woken up by a pillow being taken from under my head,” she said. “I hit my head on the ground and then he started pulling my hair. He almost killed me. Because he started choking me. And I somehow got out of it and I tried to tackle him.”
Meanwhile, regular club goers told local media and MSNBC that Mateen had been using multiple gay apps, including Grindr, with mutual acquaintances to "hook up." Reports indicate that Mateen had been visiting the Pulse Gay Nightclub, the same joint that he allegedly carried out the massacre in, since 2013.
At least four regular customers of Pulse, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender nightclub where the massacre took place, told the Orlando Sentinel on Monday that they believed they had seen Mateen there before.
Another clubgoer, Kevin West, told the Los Angeles Times that Mateen messaged him on and off for a year using a gay chat app.
"Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent," Ty Smith told the Orlando Sentinel yesterday, referring to slain shooter Omar Mateen, 29.
Smith told the paper that he saw Mateen inside at least a dozen times.
"We didn't really talk to him a lot, but I remember him saying things about his dad at times," Smith said. "He told us he had a wife and child."
The latest development has put a question mark over reports that it was Mateen's hate for homosexuals that led to the tragedy.
However, Mateen's father Seddique Mir Mateen had claimed his son got angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami a couple of months ago and thought that might be related to the shooting.
Mateen's father told NBC News that "this has nothing to do with religion" in spite of reports that his son had declared his allegiance to ISIS.
FBI chief James Comey said his bureau was "highly confident" Mateen had been "radicalised" while consuming online propaganda and that he had claimed allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a series of calls during the attack.
The massacre reverberated on the presidential campaign trail, where Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the two likely opponents in the November 8 election, clashed over how to confront violent Islamist extremists.
