• USA: Three students killed in a shooting at a school in Santa Clarita, California
  • Hawaii: A military man kills two people and commits suicide at the Pearl Harbor naval base

Was it a more purely American killing? Or a terrorist attack? In principle, the death of four people - including the perpetrator - yesterday at the Pensacola naval base in Florida belonged to the first group. But later the nationality of the perpetrator of the attack was learned: Saudi Arabia . And, from there, the conjectures about the possible motivation of the attack were triggered.

At the close of this edition, that's all there was: conjecture. It was only known that a lieutenant in the Saudi Arabian Air Force, who was in Pensacola as part of a training program , had killed three people at the base and injured eleven others before being killed by local sheriffs. The identities of the dead and injured had not been disclosed by the authorities claiming that they first had to inform their relatives. But the FBI was investigating the case to try to know if it could be qualified as a terrorist attack.

The Armed Forces and the Royal Guard of Saudi Arabia have a very close connection with the United States , a country from which they receive the vast majority of their equipment and all their training. In turn, the US Air Force actively participates in the war that Saudi Arabia maintains in Yemen, supplying targets to that country and even resupplying its planes in flight . In the US, the Saudi Armed Forces are considered the weakest link, and most likely to be influenced by Islamic fundamentalism, while the Royal Guard is seen as a kind of 'Praetorian Guard' fully committed to the security of the royal family Saud who founded the country and governs it for 87 years.

Inevitably, the incident brings to mind the case of the major (a rank similar to that of commander in Spain) Nidal Hassan, who in November 2009 killed 13 fellow gunmen at the base of Fort Hood in Texas. Hassan - who was a psychiatrist - had radicalized serious internet following the preaching of the American also Anuar al-Awlaki, an ultra radical cleric who was the al Qaeda ideologue in the Arabian Peninsula until his death in a drone attack in Yemen September 2011

The attack on al-Awlaki unleashed the criticism of Republican Senator Rand Paul - today a prominent defender of Donald Trump - for the fact that he was a US citizen who had been targeted by a 'selective murder' carried out by the Armed Forces of that same country under the explicit orders of President Barack Obama.

The killing in Pensacola is the second one that occurs in a week in a US military installation. On Tuesday, a soldier killed a partner and wounded another before taking his own life at the Navy base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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