1. 13/06/2016 9:07 pmTerror at the core of this horror killing in Orlando | HeraldSun
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Terror at the core of this horror killing in Orlando
Omar Mateen has been named as the Orlando nightclub mass killer. Picture: AFP
WHEN an incident is described as being the deadliest mass shooting in US history, it
is clearly very big news. Describing it as the biggest terrorist attack in America since
9/11 lifts it to another level. But was it, in fact, terrorism?
The question of motivation matters because knowing how to stop other such attacks
hangs on understanding what was behind the Orlando shootings.
What we know of Omar Mateen is that he was homophobic and had anger
management issues. His first wife said she left him only months after they married in
2009 because of his violent abusive behaviour.
And his father has spoken of him recently confronting a gay couple whose public
display of affection had provoked him to rage. Clearly, Mateen’s callous shooting of
more than 100 people in a gay nightclub certainly was a deliberate, cold-blooded
crime driven, at least in part, by hatred.
In that respect, what Mateen did resembles the August 2012 attack by Wade Michael
Page, a discharged American soldier who entered a Sikh gurudwara, or temple, in
Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and shot 10 Sikhs, killing six.

2. 13/06/2016 9:07 pmTerror at the core of this horror killing in Orlando | HeraldSun
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Mourners gather around candles lit during a vigil after the murders. Picture: AP
In a similar attack 12 months ago, on June 17, 21-year-old Dylann Roof walked into a
prayer meeting at a historic African American church in Charleston, South Carolina,
and shot dead nine parishioners. One month before the shootings in Wisconsin, in
Aurora, Colorado, James Holmes opened fire with military assault weapons on movie
patrons at a cinema, killing 12. Only the brave responses of moviegoers and the
arrival of police prevented a tragedy of the scale of the Sandy Hook Elementary
school shootings four months later in which 28 people were killed with an assault
rifle. The Aurora and Sandy Hook shootings in 2012 were judged to be the
murderous work of deranged individuals with no obvious ideological motives,
whereas the killers in Wisconsin and South Carolina had deep associations with
white supremacist extremism, suggesting that those were not simply hate crimes.
For that reason, the latter are seen by many to be acts of terrorism, akin to the
Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995 in which Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols
used a truck bomb to collapse the front one-third of the Murrah Federal Building,
killing at least 168 people, including 19 babies and children in the building’s daycare
centre.
Vigils held across U.S. after Florida shooting

3. 13/06/2016 9:07 pmTerror at the core of this horror killing in Orlando | HeraldSun
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One year later, in July 1996, Eric Robert Rudolph attempted a similar bombing in the
Centennial Olympic Park in the heart of the Atlanta Olympics. Fortunately, his device
was very much smaller and less effective, and the explosion resulted in only two
deaths. Rudolph admitted to being motivated by anti-abortion and anti-global
socialism sentiments.
If the verdict of domestic terrorism remains contested with respect to last June’s
church shootings in South Carolina, there is less argument that the December 2
shootings in San Bernardino represented terrorism. Husband-and-wife couple Syed
Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik opened fire on co-workers with AR-15 assault
rifles — the same sort of weapon used by Omar Mateen in Sunday’s attack — killing
14. Their story of radicalisation, in hindsight, resembles that of Tamerlan and Dzokhar
Tsarnaev, the brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013.
The fact that Mateen phoned 911 20 minutes into his attack, declaring his allegiance
to Islamic State and his solidarity with the Tsarnaev brothers, is significant, as is the
fact that IS was quick to claim credit for the attack. That makes it look the sort of
messy, crowdsourced attacks that we are beginning to associate with IS.

4. 13/06/2016 9:07 pmTerror at the core of this horror killing in Orlando | HeraldSun
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An injured man is escorted out of the Pulse nightclub after the shooting rampage. Picture: AP
Adding to the evidence for a terrorist motive is the fact that the FBI had twice
investigated Mateen, once in 2013 because of pro-terrorism comments made to co-
workers and once again in 2014 because of his friendship with fellow Fort Pierce
resident Moner Abu-Salha. In May 2014 Abu-Salha became America’s first known
suicide bomber in Syria. Also of concern is the fact that Mateen’s Afghanistan-born
father, Seddique, has made private television appearances in which he voiced
support for the Afghan Taliban.
Further reinforcing the suggestion of this being a terrorist attack is the deliberate way
Omar Mateen set about his gruesome business. Not only was it lethal, he also gave
the deliberate suggestion of taking hostages, allowing him to sustain his siege for
three hours. In that respect his lone attack looks more like the November 13 attack
on the Bataclan theatre in Paris than a simple hate crime. In September 2014 IS
spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani called for supporters to launch attacks at
home. Three weeks ago he called again for attacks during Ramadan, saying: “Get
prepared, be ready ... to make it a month of calamity everywhere for the
nonbelievers.”

5. 13/06/2016 9:07 pmTerror at the core of this horror killing in Orlando | HeraldSun
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Emergency services aid victims. Picture: ANTHONY TORRES, FACEBOOK
Was Mateen answering the IS call? Most hate crimes involve individuals and target
sites known to the attacker (schools, workplaces, even abortion clinics). The choice
of a remote target site suggests this is a different sort of crime from the all too
familiar shootings that plague modern America.
Greg Barton is Professor of Global Islamic Politics at the Alfred Deakin Institute,
Deakin University