Ray Molina, from left, Molina’s wife, Yvonne, and Leonard Lynch pray at a makeshift memorial set up near the Inland Regional Center, the site of last week’s fatal shooting that killed 14 people, Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2015, in San B…
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Schiff said it was still a mystery why the shooters, who amassed a large arsenal of ammunition, chose to attack Farook’s co-workers instead of another target. However, it is still not known if Marquez gave or sold the guns to Farook.
He declined to discuss what specifically led investigators to conclude that the couple had radicalised independently as early as 2013, but suggested the information did not come from intercepts.
“‘What it indicates is he was financing this operation or his life or his afterlife for his child and mother, using what is now wire fraud and bank fraud, so it’s just two more additional charges that the Federal Bureau of Investigation will be looking at”, Tim Clemente, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation counterterrorism agent told.
Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, told reporters afterward that neighbors of the San Bernardino shooters saw “suspicious things occurring around where these two killers were living” but didn’t tell law enforcement.
Farook, 28, a U.S.-born son of Pakistani immigrants, and Malik, 29, a Pakistani native he married past year in Saudi Arabia, died hours after the attack in a shootout with police.
The news of Farook’s previous plot was revealed as officials announced that they are investigating the possibility that his wife and fellow attacker Tashfeen Malik was “an operative”, according to.
“We are attempting to expand that investigation out and build it and build a picture of each person, the timeline and ultimately the crimes that they committed”, he said.
The radicalization appeared to have predated the rise of the Islamic State, the terrorist group that formally declared a caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq previous year, as reported by the Washington Post.
A law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said divers are looking for a computer hard drive that may have been dumped in the lake. Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, a Republican who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said they had an actual plan, including buying weapons, but became apprehensive and shelved it because of law enforcement activity and arrests in the area.
Also killed in the shooting were: Sierra Clayborn of Moreno Valley, 27; Aurora Godoy of San Jacinto, 26; Damian Meins of Riverside, 58; Robert Adams of Yucaipa, 40; Isaac Amanios of Fontana, 60; Bennetta Bet-Badal of Rialto, 46; Harry Bowman of Upland, 46; Juan Espinoza of Highland, 50; Shannon Johnson of Los Angeles, 45; Larry Kaufman of Rialto, 42; Nicholas Thalasinos of Colton, 52; and Michael Wetzel of Lake Arrowhead, 37. Marquez married a Russian woman named Mariya, whose sister is married to Farook’s older brother, in November 2014. A federal law enforcement source said Marquez and Farook appear to have contemplated some sort of attack around 2012 but abandoned the idea.
Some lawmakers have said Malik used a fake address on her application that went undetected. Her father, Gulzar Ahmed Malik, who has been a resident in the kingdom since the early 1980s, the Saudi Interior Ministry said.
Malik’s father, reached in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, condemned his daughter’s actions and said he is “very, very sad….”
He also asked which USA agencies knew of Malik’s alleged connections to a radical cleric at a mosque in Islamabad, Pakistan, and requested information about US security checks conducted on the couple when Malik applied for a visa to enter the United States as Farook’s fiancée. “I am in such pain that I can not even describe it”.
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Authorities also believe they were inspired by foreign terrorist organizations.
