Pulse Gunman’s Widow to Claim PTSD in Partially Taxpayer-Funded Defense

Faces Charges of Providing Material Support to a Terrorist, Tampering With Evidence

Noor Salman, the widow of Pulse shooter Omar Mateen, will claim PTSD in her partially taxpayer-funded defense.

Federal prosecutors filed the request for Salman to undergo a mental evaluation this week, a request that a federal judge has granted. “The request [asked] that an expert give Salman an evaluation because she plans to use a mental disease or mental condition defense in court,” the Orlando Sentinel reported, citing court records.

Salman faces charges of providing material support to a terrorist and tampering with evidence for her role in her husband’s massacre at the Pulse Nightclub just over a year ago. The shooting, an anti-gay hate crime which claimed the lives of 49 people and left 68 more injured, remains the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11 and the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Previously released court records show that Salman had told investigators that Mateen had asked her how bad it would be “if a club got attacked,” about a week before the massacre. The same records also assert that Mateen had shown her a photo of the nightclub.

Earlier this month, Salman also claimed that she is indigent, or in need of funds for her defense—meaning that said defense will be partially taxpayer-funded.

The Orlando Sentinel further reported that her defense attorneys have requested additional funding to allow a computer forensic expert to “sift through data from three computers, four cellphones, an Apple iPad Mini, multiple flash drives, 12 discs and a 38,000-page PDF file with data from Salman’s Facebook account.”   

In a filing this week, Salman’s attorneys also asked for additional details about what prosecutors say that she did or omitted in her initial interviews, in an effort to “avoid unfair and prejudicial surprise at trial.”

Salman is being held in custody until her trial, currently scheduled for March of 2018.

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