Taxpayers will be forced to pay the legal fees of the wife of an Orlando terrorist who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, according to a motion her attorneys filed in court and released Monday.
A judge granted a motion by attorneys for Noor Salman, wife of Omar Mateen, to waive her legal fees because she is considered indigent, leaving at least part of the cost of her defense to the taxpayers, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Salman’s attorneys specifically requested that the court foot the bill for a computer expert who would go through data on computers and mobile devices that belonged to her and her late husband to look for evidence to back up Salman’s claim that Mateen showed her a picture of the Pulse nightclub less than 48 hours before the shooting.
The Orlando Sentinel reports that the government-funded computer forensics expert would be responsible for sifting through three computers, four cell phones, multiple flash drives, an iPad Mini, 12 discs, and a PDF file containing 38,000 pages of data from Salman’s Facebook account.
Records show that these devices contain two terabytes of data.
Salman told investigators her husband showed her a picture of Pulse on June 10 and added that he asked her the week before the attack, “How bad would it be if a club got attacked?”
Officers killed Mateen in a shootout three hours after the shooting rampage inside the downtown Orlando gay nightclub while they rescued hostages.
Salman remains in jail awaiting trial after being arrested in January for allegedly providing support to a terrorist and obstructing justice.
Her trial is scheduled to take place in March.
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