While ISIS praised the attack in San Bernardino, they did not claim responsibility.
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US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told the New York Times the Obama administration was rethinking its approach to domestic terror because of the San Bernardino assault.
Malik and her American-born husband were killed Wednesday in a shootout with police hours after the couple opened fire on a gathering of Syed Rizwan Farook’s colleagues from the San Bernardino County public health department.
The FBI took over the investigation from local authorities Friday, saying the mass shooting is now being investigated as “an act of terrorism”.
The couple had a 6-month-old daughter, whom they left with a grandmother the day of the shooting.
David Bowdich, the assistant Federal Bureau of Investigation director in charge of the Los Angeles office, said investigators were examining a Facebook posting in which Malik is believed to have pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, made around the time of the attack.
US officials said that Farook been in contact with extremists via social media, but one official said those contacts were not recent and did not involve any significant players on the FBI’s radar.
Before the speech, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press show, said Obama may call for congressional action.
On Friday lawyers representing the attackers’ family said the relatives were “in complete shock” and that they had no idea the two had been capable of such an attack.
“We really don’t know anything about that sister”, Khaled Zaidan, chairman of the board of directors of the Islamic Community Center of Redlands, said. They said Farook’s mother never saw any of the weapons or bombs authorities found. The FBI questioned her Wednesday night and, according to the attorneys, said they would not release her until Farook’s siblings came for questioning.
Investigators are looking into whether Tashfeen Malik radicalized her American-born husband and was the driving force in the San Bernardino massacre plot, two officials said Sunday.
Farook went to the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah of America mosque in San Bernardino every day but abruptly stopped coming three weeks ago.
“This was an act of terrorism, created to kill innocent people”, Obama said. And Bowdich said they may have been planning an additional attack.
A relative of Malik’s in Pakistan, Hifza Batool, reported hearing similar things from other family members about Malik, her step-niece.
Malik, who had been living in Pakistan and visiting family in Saudi Arabia, had passed several government background checks and entered the U.S.in July 2014 on a K-1 visa, which allowed her to travel to the US and get married within 90 days of arrival. The new couple spent about a week in Saudi Arabia previous year, before returning to the United States together. She called both Syed Farook and Thalasinos “hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees” and refused to label Thalasinos an innocent in her death count.
Following the gunbattle, authorities conducted overnight searches of the home that yielded more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition, 12 pipe-bomb-type devices and tools for making more of those explosives.
“While residents from the Inland Empire have bravely fought against these extremists around the globe, we have now seen the violence from the War on Terror come to our region”, the congressman said.
The FBI is also investigating reports that Malik had posted a message on Facebook pledging allegiance to IS.
“It just doesn’t make sense for these two to be able to act like some kind of Bonnie and Clyde or something”, Farook’s family attorney David S. Chesley said.
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“There’s a lot of people that said it happened but hasn’t happened in the way that it was purported to have taken place”, he said.
