The horrific attack of June 12 on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida seems to be turning into a “ripped from the headlines” episode of Law & Order: SVU.
In an interview with Univision this week, a Puerto Rican man identified only as “Miguel” said he had been the lover of terrorist Omar Mateen — and claimed that Mateen’s motive for shooting up the nightclub and killing 49 people was revenge.
A man claiming to be the Orlando shooter’s lover says Omar Mateen was livid after discovering he’d had sex with an HIV-positive man.
The Hispanic gay man, identified only as Miguel, told Univision he met Omar Mateen on Grindr before they became ‘friends with benefits’, meeting up 20 times at a hotel in Orlando, Florida.
Miguel described Mateen as a confused gay man and a heavy drinker who was attracted to – but felt rejected by – Latinos.
He believes Mateen’s massacre on Pulse nightclub’s Latin Night was an attempt at ‘revenge’ after discovering that one of the two Puerto Rican gay men he’d had a threesome with was HIV-positive.
Miguel was emphatic on the revenge-versus-terrorism point:
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‘The thing that makes me want to tell the truth is that he didn’t do it for terrorism,’ Miguel told Univision’s Maria Elena Salinas. ‘In my opinion he did it for revenge’.
Miguel’s description of Mateen is curiously unlike that of anyone else who has spoken of Mateen’s past behavior:
Before the massacre, Miguel insists, Mateen seemed ‘adorable’ and ‘sweet’, adding that they often had oral sex and that Mateen ‘loved to be cuddled… he loved to be embraced’. …
During their casual relationship, Miguel says, Mateen spoke about Islam, describing it as ‘a beautiful religion in which everyone is welcome – gays, trans, bisexuals, heteros, everyone.’
Co-workers, schoolmates, and the people who notified the FBI of their alarms about Mateen have given a very different account of him, stating among other things that he verbally attacked gays, women, Jews, and blacks.
Interestingly, Miguel’s testimony could have been written by someone trying to make the liberal case discussed already by LU contributor Benny Huang and editor J.E. Dyer: that Omar Mateen shot up the Orlando nightclub because of the marginalization of gays in American society. J.E. predicted that the media would go out of its way to build this case and minimize the “Islamic radicalism” angle. And as Benny details, liberal bloggers are already at work creating a narrative that Mateen’s killing spree was about the supposed homophobia of Christians, not Islam.
Miguel’s interview seems tailor-made to further that narrative.
Note from the Daily Mail: Univision disguised Miguel’s identity with a prosthetic mask and altered the tone of his voice.
