Noor Salman is not guilty of helping her husband, Omar Mateen, carry out the mass shooting that claimed 49 lives at Pulse nightclub on June 12, 2016, a jury decided Friday.
The 12-member jury delivered its verdict after deliberating for about 12 hours over three days. Salman was also acquitted of obstruction of justice. Prosecutors accused her of lying to the FBI agents who investigated her husband’s mass murder, which he carried out in support of a foreign terror group, the Islamic State.
Had she been convicted, Salman, 31, would have faced up to life in prison.
Prosecutors sought to prove Salman helped Mateen prepare for the attack, joining him as he scouted possible targets and bought guns and ammunition. They also said Salman concocted a cover story to tell Mateen’s mother after he left their Fort Pierce apartment to commit the attacks.
Salman’s defense, however, said there was no reason for Mateen to involve his wife in his plot — and no proof he had done so.
“Why would Omar Mateen confide in Noor, a woman he clearly had no respect for?” defense attorney Linda Moreno said during her closing arguments. “She was not his peer, she was not his partner, and she was not his confidant.”
Central to the case were statements Salman made to Special Agent Ricardo Enriquez at an FBI office in the hours after the attack. The jury never heard those statements directly, as the agent didn’t record them. Instead, he transcribed her words — at her request, he said, because she was too nervous.
Enriquez testified about the moment he said he realized Salman was involved in her husband’s plot. After transcribing a statement from her, he asked her to sign the document and write that she had been treated fairly. She appended an apology: “I am sorry for what happened,” she wrote. “I wish I’d go back and tell his family and the police what he was going to do.”
“I said, ‘You know, Noor, I realize that you knew what was going on. You knew,’” Enriquez testified.
She denied it, so he asked her to re-read the statement.
“She began to cry, and said, ‘I knew,’” Enriquez said.
Salman would give two more statements to Enriquez, ultimately confessing she knew her husband was preparing for an attack. She also described a chilling scene: sitting alongside him as he drove around Pulse for 20 minutes during a family trip on June 8, 2016, and talked about attacking the club.
But there was a problem.
According to experts for both sides, the trip didn’t occur as described in Enriquez’s written statements.
FBI Special Agent Richard Fennern testified that most of the couple’s time that day was accounted for with receipts and cell phone records. They visited the Florida Mall, at a falafel restaurant and at a Kissimmee mosque, Fennern said, but Salman’s phone “had never been near the Pulse nightclub.”
In the government’s closing argument, prosecutor Sara Sweeney argued other elements of Salman’s confession were corroborated, such as her accounts of a trip to City Place in Palm Beach, a visit to Disney Springs and details of her husband’s extravagant spending before the attack.
“The fact that these things are ultimately corroborated shows you that the defendant did not give a false confession,” Sweeney said.
Sweeney said Mateen’s initial plan was to attack Disney Springs. He had bought a doll and a baby stroller, in which he planned to smuggle his rifle into the attraction, she said. But he was spooked by the police presence there and switched plans, ultimately choosing to strike at Pulse.
It didn’t matter if Salman knew her husband’s target, Sweeney said.
“She does not have to be his equal in the attack, and in fact she is not,” the prosecutor said.
But the defense argued to the contrary: that “if he didn’t know, she couldn’t know,” as defense attorney Charles Swift put it in his closing argument.
“That doesn’t make it less tragic,” Swift said. “Not in any way, shape, or form. It’s a horrible, random, senseless killing by a monster. But it wasn’t pre-planned.”
Throughout the trial, Salman was described in vastly divergent ways by the government and defense. To prosecutors, she was a willing accomplice who gave her husband a “green light” to carry out the attack. To the defense, she was a simple-minded person, susceptible to manipulation.
During the government’s case, jurors watched video of Salman and Mateen standing together as he purchased ammunition and jewelry. They learned that Mateen had made his wife a death beneficiary on his accounts. A former IRS investigator testified the couple spent more than $32,000 between June 1 and June 12, including $26,532 in credit card purchases. Mateen’s annual salary was about $30,000.
It was evidence, prosecutors said, that the couple was preparing for his death.
But the defense portrayed Mateen as a man with secrets.
Jurors heard from women with whom Mateen carried on trysts, including one he met through his work as a security guard and another he’d from Plenty of Fish, an online dating service. They also heard from Nemo, a friend who Mateen sometimes claimed to be visiting during his affairs, testimony indicated.
Though Nemo testified for less than 10 minutes, he was mentioned in another crucial, but disputed, piece of evidence in the case: text messages Salman sent Mateen hours before the attack.
“If ur mom calls say nimo invited you out and noor wants to stay home,” Salman wrote in a text message to Mateen. “She asked where you were xoxo. Love you.”
Prosecutors argued the messages show Salman was helping her husband concoct a cover story to tell his parents, who had invited the couple to a fast-breaking dinner at their mosque. Defense lawyers said the texts show Salman was trying to get out of going to the mosque with Mateen’s family.
Over the course of the trial, jurors saw graphic footage from inside Pulse, watching as Mateen sprayed bullets into a crowd of patrons, then stalked the nightclub, shooting the wounded as they lay on the dance floor. They also heard his conversations with an Orlando police negotiator, in which he declared his support for the Islamic State, blaming U.S. military strikes in the Middle East for the attack.
This is a breaking news story. Check back later for updates.
glotan@orlandosentinel.com, 407-420-5774, or Twitter @tzigal; ktorralva@orlandosentinel.com, 407-420-5417 or Twitter @KMTorralva
