Orlando shooter Omar Mateen and Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, who two years ago became the first American suicide bomber in Syria, were allegedly seen having a private conversation at a party several years ago, the Palm Beach Post reported someone who attended the gathering as saying.
It is the closest connection reported recently between the Abu Salha and Mateen, who the FBI investigated in 2014 after officials say Abu Salha drove a truck full of explosives into a Syrian restaurant full of government soldiers.
The FBI, in its second investigation of Omar Mateen, found no substantial connection between the two outside of having attended the same mosque years ago, but a party guest at the home of Abu Salha’s older brother told The Palm Beach Post that she saw the two together and on at least one occasion watched them have what appeared to be a serious one-on-one conversation.
The party guest, a former high school classmate of Mateen’s who asked that her name not be used, said she attended two parties at the home of Abu Salha’s brother -- one in 2011 and another the next year.
She couldn’t remember Wednesday which of the two parties she attended where she saw the private conversation, but was one of about a dozen guests at Abu Salha’s brother’s home on both occasions.
“They were over in a corner, just the two of them,” she said. “It looked like a serious conversation, but I couldn’t hear it so I can’t say what it was about.”
The guest said that at both parties, she got into debates with the men and other guests about religion. Mateen and the Abu Salha brothers advocated Islam, but she and at least two other guests were Christians.
During the second party, which was sometime in 2012, she remembers the debate becoming especially heated.
“I remember one of them -- I can’t remember which one -- told me that I was being disrespectful,” she said. “I remember I just laughed.”
Still, she said, although the debated was spirited, neither of the men were rude. She described their views as “extreme,” but added that she only viewed them as such in contrast with her Christian beliefs.
The guest said the men invited her to visit their mosque, but she never did.
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