Nightclub killer Omar Mateen was twice investigated for suspected terrorist connections — including contact with an al-Qaeda-linked fellow Floridian who blew himself up in Syria — but neither probe panned out, an FBI official said Sunday.
Despite being on the feds’ radar, Mateen was never stripped of state licenses to work as a security officer and to carry a handgun while on the job.
The first investigation of Mateen, 29, came in 2013, following reports that “he made inflammatory comments to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties,” Tampa FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ronald Hopper told reporters.
“The FBI thoroughly investigated the matter, including interviews with witnesses, physical surveillance and records checks,” Hopper said.
“In the course of the investigation, Mateen was interviewed twice. Ultimately we were unable to verify the substance of his comments and the investigation was closed.”
The following year, Mateen was interviewed again regarding contacts with Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, a 22-year-old Palestinian-American who traveled to Syria for terrorist training in 2012.
Abu-Salha — who was aligned with the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate — returned to the United States before heading back to Syria, where in 2014 he became the first American to kill himself there by driving a massive truck bomb into a restaurant popular with the Syrian military.
“We determined the contact was minimal and did not constitute a substantive relationship or a threat at that time,” Hopper said of Mateen’s relationship with Abu-Salha, who was dubbed the “cat-loving jihadist” over a photo that showed him posing with a feline in his arms.
Abu-Salha also seemed to hate homosexuals, as he posted a video on Facebook in 2011 showing an imam calling for the death of gays.
Mateen — who posted selfies on MySpace that showed him posing in a golf shirt and T-shirt emblazoned with NYPD logos — had worked for the global security firm G4S since Sept. 10, 2007, the company said in a statement.
“We are cooperating fully with all law-enforcement authorities,” the statement said.
In April 2009, Mateen married a New Jersey woman, Sitora Yusufiy, following a whirlwind romance that began when they met online. But the marriage quickly collapsed because he was abusive, her dad told The Post.
“She moved down to Fort Pierce, Fla., but within three or four months she called us to get away from him,” Yusufiy’s father, Alisher Mizavev, said at his home in Edison, NJ.
“She was suffering physical and mental abuse from him. The cops were called on him,” he added.
Yusufiy’s father — who said he and his family were immigrants from Uzbekistan — said he never liked Mateen and was opposed to his daughter marrying him because they met over the Internet.
He said his daughter is now living in Boulder, Colo., and is happily engaged to another man.
She told the Washington Post that Mateen “was not a stable person” and that she feared for her safety in the wake of his attack.
“He beat me,” Yusufiy said. “He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”
She recalled in an interview with CNN how she noticed his anger problems just months after tying the knot.
“A few months after we were married I saw his instability, and I saw that he was bipolar and he would get mad out of nowhere,” Yusufiy said. “That’s when I started worrying about my safety, and then after a few months he started abusing me physically, very often, and not allowing me to speak to my family, keeping me hostage from them.”
She cited Mateen’s “emotional instability” as the main reason for their marriage ending.
“That’s the only explanation that I could give and he was obviously disturbed, deeply and traumatized,” Yusufiy said. “When he would get in his tempers he would express hate toward things, toward everything, so in that respect, you know, yeah, but it was the moments when you would see his emotional instability.”
Records show that Mateen and Yusufiy divorced in July 2011.
He appears to have married a woman named Noor Zahi Salman, with whom he was raising a 3-year-old son, according to public records.
One family photo, posted in May, has a faint image of the Palestinian flag superimposed on it.
As of June 2016, Salman was listed as living in Rodeo, Calif., just 40 minutes northeast of San Francisco.
Describing his daily life, Mateen’s imam at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce — where he has worshiped since childhood—said he would visit “three or four times a week” and would often keep to himself.
“He was really quiet,” the imam, Syed Shafeeq Rahman, told the Orlando Sentinel. “He would shake hands . . . and take his son on his shoulders and leave.”
Rahman later denied the possibility that Mateen had been radicalized by his teachings.
“There is nothing that he is hearing from me to do killing, to do bloodshed, to do anything, because we never talk like that,” he told the New York Times. “He would come the last minute, and he would leave the first minute, and he would not talk to anybody.”