Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman
RIYADH/WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called US President Donald Trump and expressed his condolences and support for the families of the victims of the Florida naval base shooting, according to the state news agency.
The crown prince also assured Trump that Saudi authorities would offer their absolute cooperation with the US and provide all information that would help the investigations.
Investigators believe a Saudi Air Force lieutenant acted alone when he killed three people and wounded eight at a US Navy base in Pensacola, Florida, before being fatally shot by a deputy sheriff, the FBI said on Sunday.
Prince Khalid bin Salman, the king’s younger son and the deputy defense minister, offered his “sincerest condolences” to the victims’ families.
“I was trained in a US military base, and we used that valuable training to fight side by side with our American allies against terrorism and other threats,” Prince Khalid added on Twitter.
Meanwhile, in WASHINGTON, key lawmakers called for a halt to a Saudi military training program after a shooting rampage at a US naval base in which a Saudi officer killed three American sailors.
US Defense Secretary 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 in Florida.
Alshamrani, a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the Saudi Royal Air Force, opened fire in a classroom at the base on Friday, killing the three sailors and wounding eight other people before being shot dead by police.
The FBI said Sunday the shooting was being investigated with the “presumption” it was an act of terrorism, but that authorities had yet to make a final determination.
Alshamrani was reported to have posted a manifesto on Twitter before the shooting denouncing America as “a nation of evil.”
“We need to suspend the program until we investigate,” Senator Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican on national security issues, said on Fox News.
“I like allies. Saudi Arabia’s an ally, but there’s something really bad here fundamentally. We need to slow this program down and reevaluate,” he said.
US media reported that six Saudi nationals also assigned to the base have been questioned, and that Alshamrani had shown videos of mass shootings at a dinner party the night before the attack.
In a pre-taped interview that aired on Fox News Sunday, Esper confirmed that several Saudis have been detained, including “one or two” who filmed the shooting on their cellphones.
He said it was unclear if they began filming before the shooting began or after it started.
Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican whose Florida district includes the Pensacola base, warned 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.”
He said he told the Saudi ambassador “as clearly as I possibly could that we want no interference from the kingdom as it relates to Saudis that we have.
“And if there are Saudis that we do not have that may have been involved in any way in the planning, inspiration, financing or execution of this, that we expect Saudi intelligence to work with our government to find the people accountable and hold them responsible.”
“And I was given every assurance from the ambassador that that would occur,” he said.
Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it was too early to say the shooting was an act of terrorism but that Congress would press for a full investigation by the Saudis. — NNN-AGENCIES
