Police have identified the couple as Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Farook. Nila said she never saw Malik after the reception, which mosque director Mustafa Kuko said 250 to 300 people attended.
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The couple was killed by police after a shootout near their Redlands, Calif. home.
Update 2:47 p.m. ET: The FBI is now in charge of the investigation and has now determined Wednesday’s attack was an “act of terrorism”.
A USA law enforcement official said Malik used a Facebook alias to pledge her allegiance to the Islamic State group and its leader just before the shootings.
“The reason for that is that the investigation so far has developed indications of radicalization by the killers and of potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations”, he said.
FBI investigators believe a married couple who killed 14 people in San Bernardino were not part of a larger terror organization.
“Most of these areas are more gray than black or white, and that can put these companies in a very hard position”, Greene said.
The sister of Syed Farook, one of the suspects in the massacre in California, says she is deeply saddened and no had indication of her brother’s plans. A year before she got married, she started to dress more conservatively and began wearing a scarf that covered all but her nose and eyes, the maid said.
“The women (in the family) communicated with her. Farook didn’t want anyone else to talk to her”, Abuershaid said. He would not elaborate.
The couple’s motivation for the attack is a key focus for investigators.
The two officials said her family is originally from the Pakistani town of Karor Lal Esan, about 200 miles southwest of the capital of Islamabad in Punjab Province and moved to Saudi Arabia for Tashfeen Malik’s father’s work.
“That’s the part that bugs us the most: who’s gonna make her laugh now?”
“If the most evidence there is to any affiliation is a Facebook account under another person’s name… then that’s hardly anything at all”, attorney David Chesley said. “Two sympathisers of the Islamic State attacked a centre in San Bernardino, California, opening fire inside the location, killing 14 people and wounding 21”, a statement from the agency said.
In a radio broadcast affiliated with the Islamic State, the couple responsible for Wednesday’s mass shooting in San Bernardino were praised as supporters and martyrs.
The FBI refocused its efforts on these individuals earlier this year in response to a shift in tactics by the IS, law enforcement officials said.
That finding could be a “game changer” in the investigation, two USA government sources said. Investigators were trying to retrieve the data.
“What we hope you will do is not let fear become disabling…” The Farook family attorneys said he told relatives he had been teased at work about his beard. “If you look at California, they didn’t have guns and they were slaughtered”, he said in Iowa before a campaign event. He said he was one of the “sweetest Muslims I ever met” and that Farook had invited him over for dinner one night a couple years ago, before he was married.
Inside the couple’s townhome, reporters found a copy of the Quran on a living room table along with several documents, including one that authorities left behind listing what they had seized.
Investigators are looking into a report that Farook had an argument with a co-worker who denounced the “inherent dangers of Islam” prior to the shooting, an unnamed U.S. government official said. “There was nothing to show that she was extreme at all”, he said.
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Soon after Malik and Farook’s Pakistani origins were revealed, Republican Senators Jeff Sessions and Ted Cruz urged President Barack Obama’s administration to release their immigration files, as well as those of their parents.
