Islamic State said on Saturday that the married couple who killed 14 people in the mass shooting in Southern California were its followers, Reuters reported.
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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.
U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) chief James Comey said Friday that San Bernardino shooting was being investigated as potential terrorism, but there was “no indication” suggesting killers of the holiday party carnage had been part of any terrorist group.
According to public records, Farook and Malik moved to a townhouse in Redlands in August.
The lawyers said their clients have been threatened since Wednesday’s killing of 14 people at Farook’s work place.
Shortly after the massacre, authorities searched the couple’s home and found two assault-style rifles, two handguns, 12 pipe bombs and more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition, officials said, prompting fears they might have been plotting more attacks. “She stayed upstairs”, said a second family attorney David Chesley.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It also turns out that Malik took to Facebook as the attacks began, and under an alias she pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State group.
Specifics details about her postings were not disclosed by the law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not allowed to discuss an ongoing investigation.
They came to the US that same year. There “is a lot of evidence that doesn’t quite make sense”, he said.
The couple opened fire at a holiday banquet for Farook’s co-workers before dying in a gunbattle with police.
Moreover, a news agency linked to ISIS claimed the couple as supporters. Though most are men, “women are taking an increasingly prominent role in the jihadist world”, the report said.
[I}n their final days, Mr. Farook and Ms. Malik tried to erase their electronic footprints, another sign of premeditation.
In the final few years of Tashfeen Malik’s life, the people around the young woman saw her dress ever more conservatively and urge people ever more ardently to live a devout life.
“I probably don’t believe the sister”, Trump declared in an interview with “Face the Nation” set to air Sunday.
Foreigners applying from countries that are home to Islamic extremists – such as Pakistan – undergo additional scrutiny before the State Department and Homeland Security approve their applications.
Farook flew to Saudi Arabia in September 2013 and again in July 2014.
The source added that “Tashfeen Malik was not in Saudi Arabia at the time when Farook was there to perform the minor pilgrimage”.
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“It is entirely possible that these two attackers were radicalized to commit this act of terror”, Obama said.
