Article first appeared at The Free Thought Project.

On Tuesday, Marco Diaz, the current fiancé of Orlando shooter Omar Mateen’s former wife Sitora Yusufiy, told Brazilian television station SBT Brazil that Yusufiy believed Mateen was gay and that she had witnessed Mateen’s father call him gay several times, but that “the FBI asked her not to tell this to the American media.”

The FBI and law enforcement in the United States have steadfastly stuck to a narrative of “Islamist terrorism,” with their alleged demand from Mateen’s ex-wife to remain silent about his homosexual proclivities suggesting they want to downplay the glaring personal and self-hating nature of the attack in favor of the Islamic terrorism-related one that helps increase governmental power and control.

Following the Orlando massacre, Mateen’s action had been labeled as an act of “Islamic terrorism” by a wide spectrum of talking heads and politicians after widespread reports of his pledging support to the Islamic State (ISIS), but there’s much more to this story than what is being generally reported in the mainstream media.

Yusufiy says that just months into their marriage, Mateen started emotionally and physically abusing her – exploding in anger and often beating her. She claims her family “literally rescued” her from the abusive relationship and his mental instability.

In addition, a former classmate of Mateen said that the killer, who is reported to have been a regular at the gay nightclub, had previously asked him out romantically. Kevin West, a regular at Pulse, told the Los Angeles Times he had exchanged messages with Mateen on a gay dating app.

On Wednesday, representatives for gay dating apps Jack’d and Grindr said they had been contacted by the FBI as part of the Orlando shooting investigation. Representatives for the companies said they would not provide any information on whether Mateen had profiles on those sites due to those details being part of a classified investigation. In response to an inquiry from BuzzFeed News, Grindr released a statement saying: “We will continue to cooperate with the authorities and do not comment on ongoing investigations.”

Another oddity for someone purported by the media narrative to be an “Islamist terrorist” was Mateen’s call to police in which he allegedly pledged loyalty to the Islamic State during the attack, as he had previously espoused support for both Hezbollah and al-Qaeda — each of these groups have drastically different interpretations of Islam and are currently fighting against one another on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war, with both Hezbollah and al-Qaeda actively engaged in fighting against ISIS as well.

For someone purported to be an Islamic terrorist, it seems that Mateen had an extremely elementary understanding of militant Islamist extremist groups, and their differing and conflicting ideologies.

Interestingly, the 911 call in which Mateen is alleged to have pledged loyalty to ISIS is being blocked from public release. Through a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request, a journalist from Alternet attempted to obtain the 911 call made by Mateen during the attacks. The reporter received a message that the records are exempt from disclosure at this time due to a Florida Statute, which exempts from disclosure all active criminal investigative information. Oddly, the agency later publicly denied that they had refused the journalist’s FOIA request.

Make no mistake that the mainstream media’s “fear the terrorist” coverage of Mateen’s allegiance to ISIS, without any actual evidence that the group had anything to do with this attack, allows for politicians like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to call for more “boots on the ground” in the Middle East, ratchet up of the surveillance state at home and call for regulating firearms.

In contrast to the mainstream media narrative of Mateen as a “terrorist,” the picture that is actually coming together of his life is that of a very troubled individual — someone who had a history of domestic violence, a struggle with his sexual orientation, and an inclination toward radical Islam – but without any solid intellectual Islamist base as revealed by his support for groups currently in open combat with one another.

The media has been remiss in their duty to cover Mateen’s psychological history as it relates to his sexuality — and the subsequent massacre — instead choosing to run with a fear-based narrative, underpinned with identity politics, that allows for the military-industrial complex and the security apparatus to grow budgets and usurp individual liberty. How politically convenient that the “terrorism” narrative being sold to the public serves to further entrench the military-surveillance complex in the United States, which erodes essential liberty, while the raging mental health crisis that currently engulfs our country is boldly ignored.