Pensacola shooting was an act of terrorism, attorney general says – By Devlin Barrett, Matt Zapotosky (WashingtonPost)/ Jan 13 2020
Attorney General William P. Barr said Monday that the December shooting that killed three U.S. sailors on a Florida base was an act of terrorism, as officials revealed harrowing new details about the 15-minute rampage and publicly called out Apple Inc. to help them unlock the killer’s phones.
At a news conference to discuss the results of the FBI’s investigation into the shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Barr said investigators had found evidence that Ahmed Mohammed al-Shamrani, a Royal Saudi Air Force member training at the base, was motivated by “jihadist ideology,” and he posted anti-American messages on social media about two hours before his attack.
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FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said that during the attack, al-Shamrani fired shots at pictures of President Trump and a past U.S. president, and witnesses at the scene said he made statements critical of American military actions overseas. Bowdich said that while al-Shamrani did not seem to be inspired by one specific terrorist group, he harbored anti-American and anti-Israel views and felt “violence was necessary.” Bowdich said the gunman’s social media comments echoed those of Anwar al-Awlaqi, a radical Yemeni-American cleric tied to the terror group al-Qaeda who was killed in a drone strike in 2011.
Monday’s announcement offered the most definitive account of the gunman’s actions and thinking. Bowdich said investigators had interviewed more than 500 people — including witnesses, base personnel, and friends and classmates of the shooter — and collected more than 42 terabytes of digital information.
But investigators have been stymied in trying to access two key pieces of evidence — the gunman’s iPhones. Standing before giant photographs of two severely damaged devices, the attorney general publicly urged Apple to act.
“So far Apple has not given us any substantive assistance,” Barr said, though aides later clarified that Apple had, in fact, given investigators access to cloud data linked to the gunman. “This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that investigators be able to get access to digital evidence once they have obtained a court order.”
Barr did not say whether the Justice Department would seek a court order to force Apple’s compliance. The department filed legal papers on a similar case in 2016, but the issue was never resolved by a higher court.
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