Tashfeen Malik, 27, had posted an online statement of support for IS online under a false name, according to government sources. He also declined to rule out that possibility based on further investigation.
Advertisement
The lawyer for the family, David Chesley, told CNN that “it just doesn’t make sense for these two to act like some kind of Bonnie and Clyde or something”. He described Farook as a “bad person”, but said he was not radical.
The FBI confirmed Friday they had completed their search of the home, so no evidence was put at risk by the reporters’ walkthrough. He would not elaborate.
A Facebook executive says Malik posted the material under an alias account at 11am on Wednesday.
Comey’s remarks came as the Islamic State itself took credit for the massacre that killed 14 people and wounded 21.
But U.S. government sources said there was no sign that it had been directed by the militant group, which has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq and claimed the deadly November 13 attacks in Paris. He said investigators were looking into the hard drives from the couple’s computers and phones.
The fatal California mass shooting is being investigated as “an act of terrorism“. The FBI appeared to be stumped about what caused the couple to open fire, he said. “We do continue to exploit the data from those cellphones”.
“I looked at Britney Spears on Facebook and I hate Britney Spears”, he said.
Attorneys for Farook’s family urged the public not to rush to judgment.
Noting that the Farook family was “very traditional”, family attorney Mohammad Abuershaid told reporters that when the family got together, “women would sit with the women, the men with the men”. The couple had a six-month-old daughter who they dropped with relatives on Wednesday morning before the shooting.
The killer was apparently using social media to converse with Islamic extremists.
Others have done so. In May, just before he attacked a gathering in Texas of people drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, a Phoenix man tweeted his hope that Allah would view him as a holy warrior.
Meanwhile, President Obama has ordered US flags to be flown at half-staff to honor the victims. Pakistan has produced, sheltered, and also given up more prominent terrorists than any other country in the world, from Ramzi Yousef, who tried to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993, to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden, to Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Lakhvi, the last two still thriving under Pakistan’s protection. Farook and Malik weren’t being tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
TWO days after 14 people were killed and more than 20 injured when two shooters opened fire in San Bernardino, federal investigators have said they were investigating the “horrific act as an act of terrorism”. They said Farook reported meeting his future wife online.
Malik met her husband on a marriage website, and when she came to the USA, she lived as a “soft-spoken” housewife, the attorneys revealed today. It includes in-person interviews, fingerprints, checks against terrorist watch lists and reviews of her family members, travel history and places where she lived and worked.
Malik, a Pakistani national, was living in Saudi Arabia when she married Farook earlier this year.
Advertisement
According to ABC News, Malik was born in Pakistan but moved to Saudi Arabia when she was 4.
