Judge: Terrorism expert can testify in Salman trial

A terrorism expert will be able to testify at Noor Salman's trial in March, a federal judge ruled Friday.

Salman, the widow of Pulse shooter Omar Mateen, faces charges of lying to investigators and aiding and abetting in providing material support to a foreign terror organization.

Her defense attorneys had questioned the relevance of prosecutors calling on William Braniff, executive director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. He has no direct connection to the case but has studied terror groups and the so-called Islamic State group in its various forms for about a decade.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Sweeney argued that Braniff could tell jurors more about the people and groups Mateen mentioned in his calls with police the morning of the June 12, 2016, attack, in which 49 people died and at least 68 more were injured.

Mateen talked about the Islamic State group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who along with his brother killed three people near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013, then shot and killed a police officer three days later; and Moner Mohammad Abusalha, who grew up in Fort Pierce and left Florida to join an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, killing Syrian soldiers in a suicide bombing.

Braniff took the stand for an hour Friday morning to testify as he would during the trial, which is scheduled to begin March 1.

Salman’s attorney, Charles Swift, said at the end of his testimony that he had no objection to Braniff telling jurors more about other attacks as long as the information was relevant.

He has objected to allowing Mateen’s conversations with an Orlando Police Department negotiator into the trial, though Judge Paul Byron has not yet ruled on whether jurors will be allowed to hear the calls.