Orlando shooter a lone actor influenced by ISIS: Obama

Orlando shooter Omar Mateen who gunned down 49 people at a gay club in Orlando was a “lone actor” influenced by the ideologies of Islamic State militant group, US President Barack Obama said today.

“Terrorist groups like ISIL have called on people around the world and here in the United States to attack innocent civilians. Their propaganda, their videos, their postings are pervasive and more easily accessible than we want,” Obama said at the Treasury Department after his meeting with his national security team.

“This (Orlando shooter) individual appears to have absorbed some of that and during his killing spree, the shooter in Orlando pledged allegiance to ISIL. These lone actors or small cells of terrorists are very hard to detect and very hard to prevent,” he said.

Mateen killed 49 people and wounded another 53 before he was killed when police stormed the Pulse, one of Orlando’s most prominent gay venues, on Sunday.

Obama said that the government is doing everything it could to stop these kinds of attacks. “But across our government at every level, federal, state and local, military and civilian, we are doing everything in our power to stop these kinds of attacks. We work to succeed 100 percent of the time. An attacker, as we saw in Orlando, only has to succeed once,” he said.

Obama said extremist groups have perverted Islam to justify terrorism. “As President, I have called on our Muslim friends and allies at home and around the world to work with us to reject this twisted interpretation of one of the world’s great religions,” he said.