The wife of the twisted jihadi who massacred clubgoers in Orlando, Fla., has been busted in connection with the mass shooting for not fully cooperating in the probe, the feds said Monday.
Noor Salman, 30, was taken into custody by FBI agents at her home outside of San Francisco, Attorney General Loretta Lynch confirmed.
“We said from the beginning we were going to look at every aspect of this case, every aspect of this shooter’s life to determine not just why did he take these actions, but who else knew about them, was anyone else involved, is there any other accountability that needs to be had here in this case,” the outgoing AG, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, told MSNBC.
Prosecutors had been contemplating charges against her after the cowardly attack that killed 49 people and wounded 53 others. Salman was finally charged with obstruction of justice.
Her husband, Omar Mateen, was killed in a shootout with cops after the bloodbath in the packed gay nightclub Pulse on June 12.
Cops and the feds grilled Salman and concluded she was lying about how much she knew about her husband’s plans, with one report saying she went shopping with him for ammo and a holster at a Wal-Mart before the shooting.
She said she did not question him about owning a gun because he worked as a security guard.
She also admitted that she knew he had watched jihadist videos, but thought he was harmless because the FBI had interviewed him in 2013 after he boasted to co-workers that he had ties to al-Qaeda.
When a reporter from NBC Bay Area news knocked on the door of her family’s home in Rodeo, California, on Monday, her relatives declined to comment.
Neighbors told the station that the family didn’t look to be at home on Sunday, and there was no sign of police presence on Monday morning.
Salman told the New York Times in November in her only interview that she was “unaware of everything” her husband had been planning.
“I don’t condone what he has done,” she said then. “I am very sorry for what has happened. He has hurt a lot of people.”
But Salman also said her husband was violent and had beaten her.
The FBI had been to the Rodeo home before to interview her, NBC reported.
In June, a source close to the family told the network that Mateen had sent her a text during the killing spree.
“Do you see what’s happening?” he wrote.
She replied “No” and he followed up by saying “I love you, babe.”
According to neighbors, Salman attended John Swett High School in nearby Crockett, California.
She married Mateen, and the couple moved to Florida about five years ago, they said.
Salman has a 4-year-old child and has filed court documents to change the boy’s name.
She was expected to appear in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday, and from there would eventually be taken to Florida.