Saudi shooter at US base had ties to Qaida: FBI

WASHINGTON: The FBI found cellphone evidence linking al-Qaida to the Royal Saudi Air Force trainee who killed three American sailors in a December attack at a US naval base in Florida after cracking his phone open, Attorney General William Barr said on Monday. The shooter, Second Lt Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, 21, was killed by law enforcement during the December 6, 2019 attack.
He was on the base as part of a US navy training programme. The justice department succeeded in unlocking the encryption on the shooter’s iPhone after Apple declined to do so, Barr told reporters on a conference call. “The information from the phone has already proved invaluable,” Barr said. In February, an audio recording purporting to be from the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the fatal attack, but it provided no evidence. Prior to the shooting spree, the shooter posted criticism of US wars and quoted slain Qaida chief Osama bin Laden on social media.
“The evidence we have been able to develop ... shows that the Pensacola attack was actually the brutal culmination of years of planning,” FBI director Christopher Wray said on the same call, adding that evidence showed Alshamrani had been radicalised by 2015.
The justice department previously said that Alshamrani had visited the 9/11 memorial in NYC and posted anti-American, anti-Israeli and jihadi messages on social media, including two hours before the attack. Barr has said the Saudi government did not have any advanced warnings of the shooting.