This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The FBI agent who interrogated Saddam Hussein is leading the investigation into the Florida airport shooting in which five people were killed on Friday. An Iraq war veteran has been charged over the incident.

Fort Lauderdale shooting: suspect had extended contact with police Read more

George Piro, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office, was sole interrogator of the former Iraqi leader, beginning in January 2004.

In previous interviews, Piro has said Saddam did not know his true identity – calling him “Mr George” – and that he posed as a high-level envoy who answered directly to President George W Bush.

Now Piro, a native of Beirut who is fluent in Arabic and Assyrian, is in charge of the FBI investigation into the shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport that left five people dead and six wounded.

Federal prosecutors have charged Esteban Santiago, 26, with airport violence and firearms offenses that could bring the death penalty if he is convicted.

Since Friday, Piro has been careful to say no evidence linking Santiago to terrorism has been found but such connections have also not been ruled out.

“It’s way too early in the investigation,” he said on Saturday. “We’re looking over all of his social media, things like that. It’s giving us a picture of the individual but it’s way too early for us to rule out anything.

“We’re pursuing all angles on what prompted him to carry out this horrific attack.”

On Saturday, officials Florida and Alaska detailed Santiago’s extensive contacts with law enforcement relating to mental health issues.

Santiago’s brother, Bryan Santiago, told the Associated Press: “The FBI failed there ... we’re not talking about someone who emerged from anonymity to do something like this.

“The federal government already knew about this for months, they had been evaluating him for a while, but they didn’t do anything.”

Announcing the charges on Saturday, Piro said his thoughts were with the victims and their families.

“I want to ensure these families that law enforcement is working tirelessly in order to ensure justice is served,” he said.

Piro, an FBI agent since 1999, moved from Lebanon to California as a teenager. After high school he enlisted in the US air force, then became a police officer in Ceres, California, followed by a job as an investigator in the local prosecutor’s office.

Once he joined the FBI, in Phoenix, he was one of only a handful of Arabic-speaking agents – a group in great demand after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2003, Piro was promoted to the FBI’s counterterrorism division at headquarters in Washington.

In interviews including a 2008 appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Piro said he met daily with Saddam in a windowless room and worked to gain his trust by becoming his only provider of necessities and such things as paper, on which Saddam wrote poetry.

Piro said Saddam confirmed that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction prior to the US invasion but said the country might seek them to deter Iran and other threats. Saddam also denied any links to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden, Piro has said.

Saddam was executed by hanging in December 2006.

Santiago, the airport shooting suspect, served in Iraq in 2010 with the Puerto Rico national guard as part of an engineering battalion, officials said. He later served in the army reserves and Alaska national guard.

After Iraq, Piro moved on to top FBI counterterrorism jobs in Washington, including a White House position involving high-value detainee interrogation.

Since taking the top Miami FBI job, he has overseen work in areas such as healthcare fraud, identity theft and tax fraud, Ponzi schemes and mortgage fraud. Bank robberies, violent street gangs, public corruption and smuggling of humans and drugs round out much of the work for Miami’s roughly 1,000 agents and employees.