(AP) The Pentagon is imposing new restrictions and controls on all international military students at American bases, including barring them from having privately owned firearms on base, in response to a shooting by a Saudi trainee in December that killed three sailors in Florida.
The Justice Department announced this week that the attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola on Dec. 6 was an act of terrorism, and it said 21 Saudi trainees were being sent home. The 21 had jihadist or anti-American sentiments on social media pages or had “contact with child pornography,” including in internet chat rooms, officials said. None has been accused of having had advance knowledge of the shooting or helped the gunman carry it out.
After the Pensacola shooting, Defense Secretary Mark Esper ordered a review of the Pentagon’s handling of its several thousand foreign military trainees.
