The transcript of a 911 call between the Orlando shooter and authorities during last week’s massacre was released on Monday by the Department of Justice, with significant details omitted.
The record of the approximately 50-second exchange includes Omar Mateen admitting to the rampage, telling a dispatcher over the phone, “I did the shooting.”
The portion of the conversation in which Mateen pledges allegiance to a foreign terrorist organization, however, was redacted by the Justice Department.
Reacting to the release, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) demanded the full airing of Mateen’s comments to police on the night of the shooting.
“Selectively editing this transcript is preposterous,” Ryan said in a statement. “We know the shooter was a radical Islamist extremist inspired by ISIS. We also know he intentionally targeted the LGBT community. The administration should release the full, unredacted transcript so the public is clear-eyed about who did this, and why.”
According to the department’s transcript, Mateen repeatedly pledged allegiance to an “omitted” organizations.
“I pledge of allegiance to (omitted),” the transcript reads. The record again quotes the shooter as saying, “I pledge allegiance to (omitted) may God protect him (in Arabic), on behalf of (omitted).”
The department also redacted details from a summary of later interactions between Mateen and hostage negotiators.
“In these calls the shooter, who identified himself as an Islamic soldier, told the crisis negotiator that he was the person who pledged his allegiance to (omitted), and told the negotiator to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq and that is why he was ‘out here right now,'” the DOJ claimed.
During an interview on NBC News Sunday morning, Attorney General Loretta Lynch previewed that the transcripts would contain some omissions.
“It will be primarily a partial transcript of his calls with the hostage negotiators,” Lynch said. “What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this individual’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups and further his propaganda.”
Despite Lynch’s concerns for the victims, federal law enforcement officials have already publicly and repeatedly linked the shooter’s motivations to the Islamic State, without offering definitive evidence.
In a press conference days after the attacks, FBI Director James Comey described the interactions between Mateen and police on the night of the shooting.“During the calls [Mateen] said he was doing this for the leader of ISIL, who he named and pledged loyalty to,” Comey claimed.
The FBI Director added that Mateen “made clear his affinity, at the time of the attack, for ISIL, and generally, leading up to the attack, for radical Islamist groups.”
Other groups that Mateen had reportedly claimed allegiance to include Jabhat al Nusra, an extremist militia operating in Syria, and the Lebanese organization, Hezbollah–two entities that are currently at odds with ISIL.
UPDATE: Following the backlash, the Justice Department reversed its decision and released the transcripts in full without redactions. “As much of this information had been previously reported, we have re-issued the complete transcript to include these references in order to provide the highest level of transparency possible under the circumstances,” the department said in a statement. According to the new transcript, Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, and it’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
