Father of Orlando nightclub shooter posts Facebook video saying 'only God can punish homosexuality'

Seddique Mir Mateen, the father of Omar Mateen, has condemned his son’s decision to walk into a gay nightclub in Orlando and murder 49 people. And in a new video he posted early Monday morning to his Facebook page, Seddique Mir Mateen says that he doesn’t understand what drove his son to kill, but also adds that “God will punish those involved in homosexuality.”

“I don’t know what caused this. I did not know and did not understand that he has anger in his heart,” he said, as translated from Dari in The New York Times. ““Only God can punish homosexuality.”

According to CBS News, the opinions expressed in Seddique Mir Mateen’s video aligned with the rhetoric he frequently used during the Durand Jirga Show, a California-based televised cable program aimed at Afghans living in the U.S. and Europe.

In multiple episodes of the show, Seddique Mir Mateen claims to be the head of an exiled Afghan governmental body that was committed to absorbing Pakistan into the country’s borders. Many of the opinions Mir Mateen shared on his show were decidedly pro-Taliban and anti-American.

Monday’s videos follows an interview Seddique Mir Mateen gave to NBC News in which he claimed that his son became agitated after seeing a gay couple kiss in public and suggesting it might have led to Omar Mateen’s decision to open fire in Pulse nightclub.

“We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid, and he got very angry,” Mir Mateen recalled. “They were kissing each other and touching each other, and he said: ‘Look at that. In front of my son, they are doing that.’