Islamic State has praised the attacks and the 28-year-old US-born Farook is believed to have had contact with militant suspects.
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“I think his mother knew what was going on”.
“What they’re calling these two are supporters, which is kind of a lesser level”, indicating it might not have had direct contact with the couple, said Rick Francona, a CNN military analyst and a former intelligence officer. The agency said it was treating the attack as an “act of terrorism”.
If the investigation confirms those suspicions, the assault would be the deadliest inspired by Islamic extremism on US soil since the 9/11 attacks.
Malik, 27, was Pakistani, but grew up in Saudi Arabia.
A maid who worked at the house where Malik lived in the city said Malik initially wore a scarf that left her face uncovered but a year before she got married, she began wearing a scarf that left only her nose and eyes exposed, the AP reported. “He never traveled to Pakistan; he traveled to Saudi”, Mohammad Abuershaid said.
In an interview with the Washington Post one of Malik’s close friends from pharmacology school, Abida Rani, said that around 2009, Malik’s religious studies intensified.
Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik are suspected of killing 14 and injuring 21 in a shooting at a San Bernardino social center Wednesday, before being killed in a shootout with police.
Authorities shattered windows and used a blowtorch during an early Saturday raid of a Riverside, California home that officials are investigating in connection to the San Bernardino mass shooting earlier this week.
The two officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said that the family is originally from a town in Punjab province and that the father initially moved to Saudi Arabia around three decades ago for work. Bowdich refused to speculate whether Farook and Malik were planning to attack a second location, but acknowledged “it’s certainly a possibility” the Bureau is looking at.
On Friday morning, the property’s owner allowed reporters inside.
“We found two cell phones in a nearby trash can”. Investigators were trying to retrieve the data.
“What we hope you will do is not let fear become disabling…”
Until Friday, federal and local law enforcement officials said that terrorism was a possibility but that the violence could have stemmed from a workplace grudge.
The FBI said he went to Pakistan as well, but the family attorneys denied that. The couple had a 6-month-old child. Despite evidence from authorities that the couple became radicalized, attorneys said there was more evidence that said otherwise and that Farook’s relatives did not see any indications that the couple held extremist views.
Separately, a law enforcement official said investigators are looking into whether Malik was radicalized in the Middle East, where she spent considerable time, and used her 2014 marriage to Farook to penetrate the US and commit jihad.
“To honor them, to express our gratitude for their unimaginable sacrifice, we have to fight to maintain that ordinary”, San Bernardino County Supervisor Janice Rutherford said Monday of the victims. While many members said they knew Farook and described him as quiet and very studious, “no one knows anything about his wife”, said Mahmood Nadvi, son of the mosque’s founder.
An FBI official said that Marquez is not considered a suspect in the shooting.
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Others have done so.
