“Usually it’s ISIS supporters trying to radicalize young girls online as they try to find new wives, but this may be the first case I know of where the opposite happened”, Fox News quoted Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst for Clarion Project, which tracks global terrorism.
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Physical depictions of Muhammad, even respectful ones, are considered blasphemous under mainstream Islamic tradition. The declaration does not necessarily mean the terror group issued a directive to the attackers.
Islamic State said on Saturday that a married couple who killed 14 people in California in an attack the FBI is investigating as an “act of terrorism” were followers of the militant group based in Syria and Iraq.
The FBI acknowledges knowing little about Malik.
USA government sources have said there is no evidence the attack was directed by the militant group, or that it even knew who the attackers were.
Had Malik and her husband become radicalized?
The couple had driven away in an S.U.V. stocked with two AR-15-style semiautomatic assault rifles, two 9-mm. semiautomatic handguns, and fourteen hundred rounds of ammunition for the rifles and two hundred for the handguns.
Some four and a half hours after the massacre, police chased a black Ford SUV from the town of Redlands back to San Bernardino, and engaged the two occupants, Farook and Malik, in a fierce gun battle, resulting in their deaths.
While the shooting was underway, the female shooter posted a pledge of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook, three US officials told CNN. The posting was shortly before Wednesday’s attack.
Comey said that, so far, there are no indications the two suspects were part of a broader terror cell, and that the two suspects hadn’t been previously on the FBI’s radar.
He said the couple answered an ad on Craigslist.
“Love you guys”, she said in a group text message to her family. The lawyers described Malik as “just a housewife” and cautioned against rushing to judgment.
“We are going through a very large volume of electronic evidence”, he said.
Bowdich said investigators were looking carefully to determine if there is a connection to ISIS. He also said his brother, Malik’s father, had become considerably more conservative since moving with his family to Saudi Arabia a quarter century ago. Authorities were tipped that one of the shooters was Syed Farook, a 28-year-old county health inspector who had attended the gathering with many of his co-workers.
Another neighbor, Lorena Aguirre, says law enforcement broke windows and used a torch to get in the garage. “I consider that is the focus of our investigation”, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”. The surreal scene – reporters walking among baby items, handling family photos and looking at dirty dishes in a sink – was broadcast live. Among things authorities had found were two cellphones that had been crushed in an apparent attempt to destroy the information inside. Many said they hoped the community would pull together. The Farook family attorneys said he told relatives he had been teased at work about his beard.
She says authorities used a megaphone to tell whoever was in the house to come out.
At the center of the investigation is Malik, born in Pakistan and described by family lawyers as a quiet and devout Muslim who moved to the U.S.in July 2014 and married a month later.
Farook was born in Chicago to Pakistani parents and raised in Southern California.
Farook went to the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah of America mosque in San Bernardino every day but abruptly stopped coming three weeks ago.
Nadvi said Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have questioned the mosque’s leaders about the couple.
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Law enforcement officials have long warned that Americans acting in sympathy with Islamic extremists – though not on direct orders – could launch an attack inside the U.S. The Islamic State in particular has urged sympathizers worldwide to commit violence in their countries. A recent George Washington University report on IS found that one-third of the almost 300 Twitter accounts of U.S.-based IS sympathizers monitored during a six-month period appeared to be operated by women. Ali reportedly said that the reason for the liking could be as it showed she was religious and wasn’t embodying “the modern role of women today, working and all that”.
