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Orlando: She's not been arrested, but she's in trouble.
Noor Zahi Salman, 30, is the second wife of Orlando mass murderer Omar Mateen; the mother of his three-year-old son; and, for now, the focus of intense investigations by the authorities; and the target of a relentless media scrum.
Comforted that she made an early escape from Mateen's bizarre world more than five years ago, his first wife Sitora Yusufiy does the media round – sharing intimate detail of nine miserable months in which she says she was physically abused and effectively, a prisoner in her own home.
But Salman is a shadow. Making no public comment, she's been seen by the world only when a local TV crew captured footage of her, accompanied by a police escort, as she returned to their family home in Fort Pierce, to collect some of here things. But shrouded in a bulky, hooded top, very little could be seen of her apart from a wedding band on her finger.
It seems she well knew her husband was up to no good – to what extent remains blurred.
Briefing reporters, officials say she was with her husband when he bought ammunition and cased alternate targets; and that on a couple of occasions, she drove him to his ultimate target – Pulse dance bar, a popular gay and Latino hangout near downtown Orlando. And that, apparently, she had tried to talk him out of embarking on what became America's worst mass shooting.
After being briefed on the investigation, Senator Angus King, who is a member of the Senate intelligence committee, told reporters it seemed Salman had "some knowledge" of what was afoot.
"She definitely is, I guess you would say, a person of interest right now and appears to be cooperating and can provide us with some important information," King told CNN.
An unnamed official told reporters that Salman said she had warned Mateen not to carry out the attack, apparently as he left their home for the two hour drive to Orlando on Saturday evening.
Others Investigators that if Salman had been abused in the same manner as described by Mateen's first wife, would have a significant bearing on her fate – to the extent that she was an accomplice, was she forced or willing?
Some reports have alluded to the establishment of a grand jury to investigate the role of Salman, but on Wednesday, FBI assistant special agent Ronald Hooper told an Orlando press conference: "There are no impending charges."
And Lee Bentley, US attorney for the middle district of Florida, added: "We do not know when charges will be finalised … indeed, we're not sure what charges will be brought or if charges will be brought."
Other details have also emerged:
- Mateen was an excellent marksman, winning near perfect scores – 238 out of a possible 240 – when tested before he was licensed to go armed as a security guard in 2007. He also passed an accompanying psychiatric evaluation of his "mental and emotional stability".
- Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer revealed Mateen misled the police, telling them in the midst of the attack that he would station a hostage, dressed in a bomb vest, at each corner of the building. There was further confusion when a battery pack was found next to his body in the club.
- Now thought to have been a lone wolf, Mateen talked of accomplices, including snipers who would gun down people entering or exiting the club, some survivors said.
- Other possible targets cased by Mateen included Walt Disney World Resort and a shopping complex called Disney Springs.
- In a surreal media moment, Orlando cable news channel News 13 revealed that Mateen had called into its newsroom in the midst of the Pulse siege. Mateen proclaimed his allegiance to the Islamic State, but it seemed that neither the producer who took the call nor Mateen quite knew what to say to each other.
- A blood donation centre in Fort Pierce, Mateen's hometown, revealed that two weeks before mounting an attack that created an unprecedented demand for blood, Mateen had walked in and made a donation of blood.
- Having previously blamed a Miami gay couple who kissed and touched in front of his son for provoking Sunday's massacre, Mateen's father Seddique Mateen found others to blame – the club's management, which he argued had failed to provide adequate security.
