The two San Bernardino shooters were radicalized at least two years ago – a year before one of them came to the US on a fiancée visa – and discussed jihad and martyrdom as early as 2013, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday.
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It’s possible that he and Mr. Farook had planned an attack together in 2012, but abandoned it, a federal law enforcement source told Reuters.
Dive teams from the FBI and sheriff’s department searched a small lake in San Bernardino, California, on Thursday as part of the investigation of last week’s massacre of 14 people at a nearby county office center, a law enforcement source said.
Comey pointed to an attack in Garland, Texas in May that was thwarted by fast-acting police before shooters could kill anyone. He also declined to specify what the divers were looking for.
CNN reported investigators were seeking a computer hard drive that belonged to the couple, who the Federal Bureau of Investigation has said were inspired by Islamic extremists.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has said the Obama administration is now reviewing the program.
“He was pulling out things from the house to give to people and putting it on the curb; he said, ‘Hi, we’re moving…,’ which, for him, was a lot because he normally doesn’t initiate conversations”, Aguirre said.
“What really bothers me most is that none of the 14 who perished had a chance”, he said. “It appears that there was not any evidence that would have been discoverable during an interview for a visa”.
“They are trying to motivate people already in the United States to become killers on their behalf and they would very much like to – as they aspire to be the leader in the global jihad – send people here to conduct attacks”, Comey said. Officials say they are fact-checking Marquez’s claim that he helped plan a terrorist attack with one of the shooters in 2012, only to abandon the assault.
Marquez was also known to be a close friend of Syed Rizwan Farook, with one neighbor telling journalists that the pair had close since childhood.
Marquez bought two AR-15s years ago that were among the weapons Farook and his wife used in the shooting.
“He has admitted that in 2012 they had something in mind and they didn’t do it because there had been some immediate arrests by the counter-terrorism people”, Senator James Risch, who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN.
In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Though Marquez stayed connected with the family by marrying the sister past year of Farook’s brother’s wife, according to country records obtained by the LA Times.
“My son is a good person”, she said. He said he ran into Marquez, who he recalled as quiet and introverted, at a party and asked why he hadn’t been coming to sermons more often. They also said that they will likely continue for several days so they can thoroughly investigate the area.
“I don’t know how this happened…” However, Viviana Ramirez, a friend of Marquez, told the Los Angeles Times that Marquez rarely discussed his family or his marriage.
The ceremony took place at the Islamic Society of Corona-Norco, according to the marriage licence, though the mosque’s facility manager denied it occurred there.
According to officials, Marquez told investigators that he and Farook were on the path to radicalization as early as 2011. The radicalized couple’s Russian in-laws have now become another focus of a multi-faceted investigation probing whether Farook and Malik were a match specifically made for the goal of jihadi terror.
Viviana Ramirez, 23, a friend of Marquez’s and fellow student at Riverside Community College, described him as shy but said they bonded over their mutual desire to enlist in the military.
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Gulzar Ahmad Malik spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, saying he is “very, very sad”. His daughter was from Pakistan but traveled to Saudi Arabia.
