Survivors: Orlando Jihadi Said He Wanted ‘Americans to Stop Bombing His Country’

Jihadist terrorist Omar Mateen told a hostage inside Orlando’s Pulse night club Sunday morning and a 911 operator that the reason for his actions was to get “Americans to stop bombing his country,” a survivor told the Washington Post.

Patience Carter, a 20-year-old women who was in Pulse nightclub when Mateen entered and started shooting, explained that during the rampage, Mateen called 911 to pledge his allegiance to the Islamic State and also to let them know that his motivations wee spurred by the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Mateen’s parents are from Afghanistan, though he himself is a U.S. citizen, making his country America.

During his rampage, Mateen entered the bathroom, where two dozen hostages had take refuge from the carnage inside the club. Mateen asked those inside if there were in any black people in the bathroom. When one man spoke up, according to Carter, Mateen answered with, “You know I don’t have a problem with black people,” Carter recalled during a news conference. She said he added: “This is about my country. You guys suffered enough.”

According to the Washington Post, Mateen also told hostages in the bathroom that there were “snipers outside” the club, a claim that prove unfounded.

Carter went on to say it “sounded as if he was communicating with other people who were involved with it… Maybe he was just deranged, maybe he’s just talking to himself, but I honestly feel like I don’t think he was able to pull that off all by himself.”

Another survivor, Tiara Parker, told her local news outfit Fox 29 in Philadelphia that Mateen said something similar regarding American politics to her. She, too, locked herself in one of the club’s bathrooms. “I could hear him talking and he said. ‘I don’t have a problem with black people. It’s nothing personal. I’m just tired of your people killing my in Iraq,’” she claims.