Without knowing it, a Kissimmee mosque had a brush with the killer who just days later ignited terror at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

  • Omar Mateen visited a Kissimmee mosque 4 days before Pulse attack
  • AML Center in Kissimmee has since received several threats
  • #OrlandoUnited: Complete coverage

But leaders at the American Muslim Leadership Center want to underscore that their group has nothing to do with Omar Mateen and were horrified by his actions.

"We are not associated with this terrorist ... with this murderer," AML Center Imam Helmi Abufarah El Agha said.

New video released Wednesday shows the Pulse nightclub shooter praying at the mosque, just days before the June 12 terror attack. Mateen was spotted on FBI surveillance video praying at the AML Center four days before he killed 49 people and injured 53 others.

"He walked in and didn't talk to anybody. (He) just kept his head down, went straight to a corner and prayed for a good 10 minutes by himself, and then he turned, stood up and walked right out," El Agha said. "If we had known him at all or known where he was planning or what he was planning on doing when he came in. ... No one knows. I wish. ... God only knows what was going through that man's mind."

The imam explained that the center's doors are always open to tourists visiting Central Florida, and they didn't even know Mateen had visited the center until the FBI found his face on their surveilance cameras two days after the shooting.

Since the shooting at Pulse, the AML Center has received several threats to its visitors, including a bomb threat.

On Wednesday, the imam played a voicemail threat he received the day before. The caller, who is still unidentified, said, "Your ladies with their covers on their heads, and your little boys that you are going to strap bombs to. .... Get the (expletive) out of here."

"My hope moving forward is that my wife could come home and not tell me about her being called a terrorist when she takes my son out shopping," El Agha said.

That's the same hope Hajir Maliki and her family have as new refugees who fled Iraq, and then Syria, to come to the United States for a better life.

"We are simple people," Maliki said. "We just want to live in quiet and calm and good things."

The imam said he hopes people who see the video of Mateen don't associate the gunman with them, because he said in no way does his group support Mateen's deadly act.

"Islam does not condone such violence. This is not what we stand for. Don't hijack our religion," El Agha said.