Washington: US President Barack Obama, has made it clear Monday that presently there is no evidence that Omar Mateen, who was solely responsible of the massacre of fifty people at a club in Orlando on Sunday received orders from ISIS.
“At this stage, we see clear evidence that was directed externally,” Obama said from the Oval Office, noting that there is no “direct evidence that was part of a larger plot.”
“It seems that at the last moment announced allegiance to Islamic State, but there is no evidence yet that was led by the Islamic State”, he pointed out, after being informed by the vice president, Joe Biden, by FBI Director James Comey; Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson; the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Nicholas Rasmussen and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.
The president has argued that Mateen acted “inspired by extremist information disseminated on the Internet” and that such information is being investigated “in order to get a better idea of the path followed the murderer to decide to launch this attack.”
He stressed that the case is still “in the initial phase of the investigation and is still much to know.” “What we can say is that this is being treated as a terrorist investigation.”
He defended the need to meet the challenge of the “perversions of Islam” seeking to reach “the minds of disturbed or weak people” and make them act.
“So counteract this extremist ideology is increasingly important that disrupt plots orchestrated from outside time,” warned Obama, who has once again expressed condolences to the families of the victims.