Key US lawmakers on Sunday called for a halt to a Saudi military training program after a shooting rampage at a naval base in Florida in which a Saudi Arabian officer killed three US sailors.
US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said he has ordered a review of vetting procedures, while defending the training program that brought Mohammed Alshamrani to Pensacola Naval Air Station.
Alshamrani, a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the Saudi Royal Air Force, opened fire in a classroom on Friday, killing the three sailors and wounding eight other people before being shot dead by police.
Alshamrani, who was armed with a lawfully purchased Glock 9mm handgun, was reported to have posted a manifesto on Twitter before the shooting denouncing the US as “a nation of evil.”
The FBI on Sunday said it was investigating with the “presumption” it was an act of terrorism, as in most active shooter probes, but had yet to make a final determination.
However, White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien went further, saying: “To me, it appears to be a terrorist attack.”
“We’ll have to see what the FBI investigation shows,” O’Brien added, on CBS’ Face the Nation.
The FBI’s main goal is to confirm whether Alshamrani “acted alone or was he a part of a larger network,” special agent-in-charge Rachel Rojas said.
“We currently assess there was one gunman who perpetrated this attack and no arrests have been made in this case,” she said.
US lawmakers called for the Saudi training program to be halted pending the investigation’s outcome.
“We need to suspend the Saudi program until we find out what happened here,” US Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican, said on Fox News.
In a pre-recorded interview that aired on Fox News Sunday, Esper confirmed that several Saudi Arabians had been detained, including “one or two” who filmed the shooting on their cellphones.
US media also reported that Alshamrani had shown mass shooting videos at a dinner party the night before the attack.
Rojas said a number of Saudi Arabian students who were close to Alshamrani were cooperating with investigators, and the Saudi government had pledged to “fully cooperate” with the investigation.
Saudi Arabia remains one of the closest US allies in the Middle East, and US President Donald Trump has cultivated its controversial de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
On Sunday evening, White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said that Trump had spoken with the crown prince, who “reiterated Saudi Arabia’s commitment to working with the United States to prevent a horrific attack like the Pensacola shooting from ever happening again.”
However, US Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican whose Florida district includes the Pensacola base, said that the shooting “has to inform on our ongoing relationship with Saudi Arabia.”
Speaking on ABC’s This Week, he called for the military training program to be halted “until we are absolutely confident in our vetting program.”
US Senator Cory Booker said that “this is a relationship that has serious problems.”
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