US officials have said that around the time of the San Bernardino shooting attack, Tashfeen Malik sent a post to her Facebook page pledging loyalty to al Baghdadi.
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As the FBI investigates the attack as an act of terrorism possibly inspired by ISIS, the agency is now working to determine if the man, a former neighbor of one of the attackers – Syed Rizwan Farook – had any knowledge of the plot, The Washington Post reports.
Agents removed bags and boxes of evidence from the home, Fox News reported Sunday.
The New York Times, in its first front-page editorial in almost a century, said it was “a moral outrage and a national disgrace” that the sort of firearms used in the attack were readily available.
“I’ve always thought if more good people had concealed carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in”, Jerry Falwell Jr. said at the school’s convocation to loud cheers.
Several neighbors said they noticed about two years ago that Farook had begun wearing traditional Pakistani clothing – a long tunic and an Islamic prayer cap.
On Thursday, Gustavo Ramirez, who said he was Marquez’s stepfather, told a Times reporter that he and his wife hadn’t heard from Marquez since Wednesday, the day of the shooting, and were concerned.
Following the attack, the county shut down except for essential services, with many of its 20,000 employees staying home, said Felisa Cardona, a county spokeswoman. They said Farook’s mother never saw any of the weapons or bombs authorities found.
California’s Muslim community expressed its horror on Wednesday at the mass shooting that killed at least 14 in San Bernardino, after a local Muslim man was widely identified as a suspect.
While authorities did not cite specific evidence that led them to the terrorism focus, a U.S. law enforcement official said the wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, had, under a Facebook alias, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group and its leader.
It is not clear whether he purchased the guns for Farook or whether Farook obtained them from him later. “We think that she had a lot to do with the radicalization process and perhaps with Mr. Farook’s radicalization from within the United States”.
“The investigation so far has developed indications of radicalisation by the killers and of potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organisations”, he said.
It is now the deadliest such terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001. Rani said that Malik would travel across town to a madrassa that belonged to the Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam, a particularly conservative branch that’s widely practiced in Saudi Arabi, where Malik spent much of her youth. Malik arrived in the US on a K-1 visa for fiancees in July 2014, and the couple married the following month in Riverside. He was a daily attendee there as well, but suddenly stopped going three weeks before the shooting, according to brothers Nizaam Ali and Rahemaan Ali, who attend the mosque.
She returned to Pakistan and studied pharmacy at Bahauddin Zakaria University in Multan from 2007 to 2012.
U.S. authorities were trying to learn what contacts Malik might have had with Islamic militants in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where she grew up, the official said on condition of anonymity.
“She was a very hardworking and submissive student”, Hussain told the Los Angeles Times.
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Pakistani police and intelligence agents have searched the house where she lived in the city of Multan, seizing documents, family photo albums and a laptop belonging to Malik’s sister, Shahida, said Shabana Saif, a counterterrorism official.
