Originally posted at: 2:26 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2018.

Jury selection will begin Thursday in what’s anticipated to be a nearly two-month long trial against Noor Salman, the widow of the Pulse nightclub gunman.

Salman is facing federal charges, accused of obstruction of justice and providing material support to terrorists.

Federal prosecutors contend Salman was aware, and knowingly helped her husband Omar Mateen plan and carry out the attack on Pulse, the popular gay Orlando nightclub. Mateen was killed in a shootout with police.

In the hours after the shooting on June 12, 2016, Christine Leinonen turned to reporters for help in trying to find her son. Hours had passed without a returned phone call or text.

The next day she would later learn that her son Christopher Andrew Leinonen was among the 49 killed.

Leinonen plans to attend much of Salman’s trial when it begins Thursday at the federal courthouse in downtown Orlando.

“I trust the criminal justice system. She has a right to a jury trial. She’s exercising that right, and whatever the outcome of that trial, I will accept it,” Leinonen said. “If she is found responsible and guilty for assisting in domestic terrorism, then I have nothing to say to her. But I would like to talk to the judge so there is then the maximum sentence.”

Leinonen said she has been given a “life sentence” — a life without her only son.

In the time since Christopher’s death, Leinonen has devoted her life to advocating for gun control and equality for the LGBT community.

Friends later established ‘The Dru Project’ in his honor that helps provide scholarships and support to Gay Straight Alliance chapters and other LGBT causes across the United States.

Leinonen has also devoted much of her life since June 2016 to finding out exactly what happened at the shooting. Those are details that she says she was told by the FBI would only be revealed at trial.

Much information has remained sealed by court order, but attorneys on both sides are expected to reveal new details throughout the trial that have yet to be released. Federal prosecutors also plan to introduce as evidence, a series of videos, phone calls and text logs.

Leinonen said she is most eager to see the surveillance video from inside the nightclub as the attack played out.

“I’ve already envisioned in my head my son, screaming for 10 minutes begging someone to get him and no one is getting him,” Christine Leinonen said. “I already have the worst case scenario in my head, so it’s going to make it either definitive, or it’s going to ease that horror that’s in my head already.”

Autopsy reports show Christopher “Drew” Leinonen was shot a total of nine times — four in the legs, and five in the torso.

Leinonen said what she doesn’t know is who actually shot her son — the gunman or police. She also doesn’t know whether there was a missed opportunity for her son to have been rescued.

Those are answers she hopes will come to light during the trial, and will be revealed by playing the surveillance video.

“I can live with the truth and that’s what I want; I want to learn the truth about everybody and everything, find out exactly how everything happened, look at it, learn it, process it, and live with it,” Leinonen said.

A spokesman for Orlando Police Department told Spectrum News 13 in a statement that it has yet to receive the FBI’s investigative findings on OPD’s response.

Jury selection in Noor Salman’s trial is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Thursday.