A Newly Released Statement Proves Pulse Shooter's Widow Knew of the Attack

New evidence has been released in which the widow of the gunman who murdered 49 people at the LGBT nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Fla., during pride month in 2016 knew that he had been planning a massacre for months, according to USA Today.

Noor Salman, who was married to the shooter, Omar Mateen, pleaded not guilty when she was arrested last year on charges of providing material support to a terrorist and tampering with evidence, but a 12-page statement she gave to the FBI in the hours after Mateen gunned down nearly 49 people and injured dozens more, tells another story.

In the statement Salman gave on June 12, 2016, in the wake of the shooting, she told federal authorities that her husband was angered by the treatment of Muslims in the Middle East and intended to retaliate against Americans, USA Today reported.

The document, released in late December, contradicts Salman's previous claims that she knew nothing of Mateen's plans. When she was arrested, her attorneys mounted the defense that not only did she know nothing about her husband's plans but that she had suffered years of Mateen raping and beating her and that she was suffering from PTSD.

In the hours after the attack, she told the FBI, "My fears had come true and he did what he said he was going to do. I was in denial and I could not believe that the father of my child was going to hurt other people."

The statement details that she knew exactly what Mateen would do before it happened. She said she saw a rifle in the trunk of his car and loads of ammunition. She also caught him perusing clubs in Orlando until he found Pulse. "This is my target," Salman said her husband told her.

Currently, Salman's attorneys are fighting admission of the statement in her case claiming she was in custody and had not been read her Miranda Rights, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

"I knew when he left the house he was going to Orlando to attack the Pulse nightclub," Salman wrote in the statement.