Tashfeen Malik, (L), and Syed Farook are pictured passing through Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in this July 27, 2014 handout photo obtained by Reuters December 8, 2015.
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The mass shooting on December 2 left 14 people dead and 21 wounded in what the FBI is investigating as a possible terrorist attack.
If they were – or if Marquez knew at the time when he transferred the rifles to Farook that they were going to be used for a violent act – he could be charged with a federal felony, law enforcement officials told The Washington Post last week.
A small number of public posts recovered by ABC News from Facebook account under a different name that authorities believed was used by Malik do not show particularly incendiary language, but one gives a vague warning to “coconut Muslims”, a derogatory term sometimes applied to pro-Western Muslims.
Authorities say Marquez legally purchased the high-powered guns used by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife to kill 14 people at a holiday gathering of Farook’s health department co-workers on December 2.
The assailant, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, a naturalized US citizen living in Hixson, Tenn., was killed by police gunfire after he shot and killed four Marines and a sailor and wounded three other people.
The Islamist militant group has “revolutionized” terrorism by seeking to inspire such small-scale attacks, Comey said, noting the group uses social media, encrypted communications and slick propaganda to recruit followers worldwide.
An FBI spokesperson later clarified Comey’s remarks to say the director was only speaking about events before the shooting. Investigators have been delving into Marquez’s relationship with Farook, but authorities have not accused him of plotting or knowing about plans for the San Bernardino attack. One of the two sources, who attended the funeral, also said that it took almost a week to find a graveyard willing to accept the bodies, as they all feared the graves would be desecrated. Jim Risch, a Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Marquez was a former neighbour of Farook.
However, about 10 people did attend the funeral, including fellow mosque-goers and members of 28-year-old Farook’s family.
The friends were witnesses at the wedding of Farook’s brother, Raheel, to a Russian woman in 2011, according to Riverside County marriage records. But the owner, Jerry Morgan, who hired Marquez to check IDs at the door, said he would have fired Marquez if he had heard him discussing the existence of sleeper cells.
Marquez converted to Islam several years ago and for a time worshiped at a mosque in Corona.
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Right after the shooting, Marquez called his mother to say he was safe but that he wouldn’t be coming home, neighbor Lorena Aguirre said.
