According to the news agency, Malik moved with her father to Saudi Arabia when she was a toddler-the move appears to have been prompted by a family disagreement over an inheritance. “But I wanted you to know that so far we don’t see such indications”, he asserted.
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Reporters and photographers crowd into the living room of an apartment in Redlands, Calif., shared by San Bernardino shootings suspects Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, Dec. 4, 2015.
One US official familiar with the investigation said Malik had posted on Facebook under an account with a different name. Six months ago they had a daughter.
The FBI is investigating possible links to groups outside the United States and said the rampage is being probed as “an act of terrorism“. Pakistani officials mentioned that Tashfeen Malik returned to the Layyah District in the province of Punjab, Pakistan where she lived in order to study Pharmacy at the University of Bahauddin Zakariya in Multan.
Malik, 29, and Farook, 28, were killed in a furious shootout with police hours after they opened fire with assault rifles on a gathering of Farook’s colleagues from the San Bernardino County public health department, where he worked as a restaurant inspector.
“This is looking more and more like self-radicalisation”, a law enforcement official said.
“It just doesn’t make sense for these two to be able to act like some kind of Bonnie and Clyde or something”, Farook family attorney David S. Chesley told CNN’s Chris Cuomo. Farook’s sister and brother-in-law said Friday they have begun the process of adopting the child. “So two years down the road, they would have looked at her again and screened her extensively”, Edward said.
When Farook’s family members came to visit, he said, the women sat in one room and the men in another. “ISIS has said all along that they want their sympathizers and believers to commit an attack here in the USA, so that’s a concern because it can happen at any time”, he said. In addition, the law enforcement source said investigators think a workplace issue with religion may have sparked the killings.
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It has emerged Farook and Malik had rented a home near a location where investigators found thousands of rounds of ammunition and homemade bombs, including 12 pipe bombs, leading to the conclusion that more attackers were planned. “We may not be able to prevent every tragedy, but – at a bare minimum – we shouldn’t be making it so easy for potential terrorists or criminals to get their hands on a gun that they could use against Americans”.
