In wake of Florida shooting, Saudi trainees ousted from S.A. military base.

Nine students at four Air Force bases, including Joint Base San Antonio-randolph, were among the 21 Saudi Arabian military trainees sent home after a federal investigation sparked by the terrorist shooting last month at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, the Navy Times reported this week.

The students were found to have jihadi or anti-american content on their social media, or some contact with child pornography.

The assignments at Air Education

and Training Command bases suggest they were student pilots. Air Force Lt. Col. Uriah L. Orland, a Pentagon spokesman, said only that they were in “flight training programs” in the Navy and Air Force and declined to say where they were based.

The Dec. 6 shooting in Pensacola by a Saudi trainee left three American sailors and the gunman dead.

The subsequent federal investigation found lapses in the Pentagon’s screening of foreign students before they come to the United States for language and military training, Attorney General

William Barr has said.

The online contact that the probe uncovered did not rise to the level of offenses the government typically would prosecute, but was enough to remove them from U.S. military instruction programs, he said at a news conference Monday.

Authorities in Riyadh will review each case for violations of Saudi law and have agreed to return any student the United States decides to prosecute, Barr said.

The Justice Department found Saudi Royal Air Force 2nd Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani was driven by a jihadist ideology to gun down three sailors and severely wound eight others before he was killed in an exchange of gunfire.

“I wouldn’t suggest or speculate that improved vetting would necessarily have prevented this particular event, but I do think it’s clear, and I think the Department of Defense agrees, that we have to improve our vetting procedures and they are in the process of doing that,” Barr said.

Twelve of the Saudis were based at Pensacola, a Justice Department spokesman said. The remainder were training at Ran

dolph, Laughlin AFB in Del Rio, Columbus AFB in Mississippi and Vance AFB in Oklahoma, the Navy Times reported.

Officials at the Air Education and Training Command, which oversees those bases, declined comment.

Barr said 17 Saudis had social media containing some jihadi or anti-american content, but authorities found no evidence of any affiliation or involvement with any terrorist activity or group. Fifteen of them had some kind of contact with child pornography.

The Saudis, like other foreign students, are free to travel off base, as Alshamrani did in a trip taken to the 9/11 Memorial in New York during the Thanksgiving holidays.

Foreign students long have trained at AETC bases, learning to speak English at the Defense Language Institute at Jbsa-lackland.

Enlisted maintainers study English and learn to work on aircraft at Sheppard AFB in Wichita Falls. Foreign student pilots have been assigned to Randolph, Laughlin, Columbus, Vance and Sheppard.

The Defense Language Institute's English Language Center at Lackland instructs students from more than 100 partner nations, including militaries from the Middle East that purchase U.s.-made weapons. Saudi Arabia historically has made up a large contingent of students there..

The school, which an Air Force website says is known by foreign militaries worldwide as the DLI, has trained American allies for about 65 years in San Antonio. It has a staff of around 500, mostly Department of the Air Force civilians who teach English. Between 1,200 and 1,400 students a day attend the school, depending on the time of year.