Pensacola Shooting on US Military Base Stirs Concerns of Islamist Infiltration

Investigators have yet to label it a terrorist attack, but a Saudi airman undergoing training at a naval aviation base in Florida appeared to have been radicalized at least several days before a Friday shooting spree at the base that left three people dead and eight others wounded. The alleged attacker, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the Royal Saudi Air Force, was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy who arrived on the scene. US media reports say that Alshamrani attended a dinner earlier in the week where he played videos of mass shootings for other Saudi airmen training at the base. The SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors Islamist extremism on the internet, says that several hours before the attack, the alleged shooter tweeted that he hated Americans for waging wars in Muslim countries and supporting Israel. According to SITE, he also quoted Osama bin Laden. The New York Times reported that investigators had questioned six Saudi nationals, three of whom were said to have filmed the shooting.