Wife of Pulse shooter charged with aiding and abetting

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ByKatie Marzullo KGO logo
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Wife of Pulse shooter charged with aiding and abetting
The wife of Omar Mateen has been arrested in Rodeo and will appear in an Oakland courtroom Tuesday on an aiding and abetting charge seven months after the Pulse shooting.

RODEO, Calif. (KGO) -- The wife of the Pulse Nightclub shooter was arrested Monday in Rodeo seven months after her husband, Omar Mateen, opened fire inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, killing 49 people.

RELATED: Noor Salman, wife of Orlando nightclub shooter, arrested in Bay Area

When she appears in federal court in Oakland Tuesday morning, it's likely the indictment will be unsealed. We will know more about how the FBI came to charge her in connection to the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

The U.S. Attorney's Office says Noor Salman has been charged with aiding and abetting Mateen in the deadly attack on the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. They say that provided material support to ISIL, the terror group also known as Isis.

"She's being charged with aiding and abetting in materially aiding the criminal act," said Legal Analyst Christian Picone. "So she could be prosecuted in essence as a principal. As if she were the person who went to the nightclub."

The Orlando shooter reportedly texted his wife during the attack and she accompanied him on at least one trip to a gun shop as he bought ammunition.

"She could face whatever maximum sentence that her husband, had he not been killed, would have faced," Picone told ABC7 News.

Salman's attorney, Linda Moreno, released a statement to ABC News: Noor Salman had no foreknown knowledge nor could she predict what Omar Mateen intended to do that tragic night. Noor has told her story of abuse at his hands. We believe it is misguided and wrong to prosecute her and that it dishonors the memories of the victims to punish an innocent person.

FBI agents arrested Salman at her parents' home in Rodeo Monday morning.

"It was 7:30, 7:45 when I heard the commotion," said neighbor Glauber Franchi. "People walking around, car doors slamming and the dogs went off like crazy, but they never came to my door."

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Salman, 30, grew up in Rodeo and married the Orlando gunman in the Bay Area in 2011.